Camp Gagnon - The Secret Cult that Created Chess.com

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Danny Rensch joins us today for a raw, unfiltered deep dive into the hidden layers of his life—from the extreme world of high-control groups to the high-stakes battleground of global chess. We explore his upbringing inside the Church of Immortal Consciousness, breaking down the strange reality of "The Village," channeled trance rituals, and the psychological mechanisms that draw people into cults. Danny opens up about surviving abuse, finding purpose through intense adversity, and his eventual escape. Welcome to Camp! 🏕️ Shoutout to our sponsors: Ultra, Perplexity, Blue Chew and Morgan & Morgan -Don’t sleep on ULTRA Pouches. New customers get 15% Off with code CAMP at takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad -Start your free trial of Perplexity Computer today at https://pplx.ai/camp and experience the next phase of AI. #ad Want the even WILDER theories? SIGN UP TO THE PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CampGagnon 👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo 🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com 🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.com Timestamps: 03:18 Chessmate’s Cheating Scandal 10:14 Church of Immortal Consciousness 15:01 Why People Join Cults 27:38 Teachings of The Cult 40:34 Prophet Duran 47:20 Life in The Village 49:10 Obtaining Christ Consciousness 54:35 Trance Rituals 1:00:15 Process of The Trance 1:07:52 Channeled Messages From Trances 1:17:21 What Happened After Church? 1:19:54 Moving Families Around 1:22:20 The Process + Finding Purpose 1:32:20 The Process in Different Cults 1:37:34 Being Chosen For The Process 1:50:50 Violent Process Rituals 2:05:25 Finding Good in The Bad 2:10:50 Becoming a Chess Prodigy 2:34:40 Russian Defector Chess Coach 2:44:00 Road to Grand Master + Medical Issues 3:04:20 Buildup to Abuse + Learning to Cope 3:14:20 Leaving The Village + Relationship w/ Mother 3:21:40 Relationship w/ Father 3:28:10 How Danny Found His Wife 3:39:30 Creating Chess.com 4:02:24 Today’s Revolution of Chess 4:19:05 Hans Niemann Cheating Scandal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny Ranch was raised in an off-grid cult where a medium would go into a trance and claim to channel a 600-year-old spirit. And it's also the place where violent interrogations and spiritual hierarchy controlled every aspect of his life. And at 12 years old, Danny was told that his divine purpose given by this entity was to become the world chess champion. And soon after, the cult leader separated him from his mother and took control of his chess career. And in the pursuit of becoming a world champion, he developed the skills. to help build chess.com. And eventually found himself at the center of one of the biggest cheating scandals

in modern chess. Magnus Carlson versus Hans Neiman, a massive lawsuit, rumors on both sides. It is a fascinating story. And today, we discuss how intelligent people fall into cults and whether the spirit that Danny grew up hearing could have actually been real. And he talks about the mistakes that he made

when the entire chess world turned on him. This is a fantastic episode. Danny is a phenomenal story. teller and an even better person. I truly enjoy the time and I really think you guys want to like the episode. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Danny, how are you? I'm good, Mark.

Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining me in my tent. I am truly so stoked to have this conversation. Not only did I get to read your book Dark Squares, which is fascinating and a movie on paper. You know, like I'm reading this thing. I'm like just seeing the whole film in my brain is what it feels like. But we also had a great evening last night. Yeah, which was awesome.

I don't get to have too many of those New York nights. I got a wife and a kid. I get tied up with stuff, but then, you know, someone important comes into town. It's always nice to tell you. I appreciate being somewhat important, but I'll say I don't get those nights either. Obviously, a wife and four kids,

and I live in Salt Lake City, which doesn't have the same New York night life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zero-proof alcohol. Definitely changes the vibe over in Salt Life. Very different. Yeah. No, it was awesome. And thank you for having me. This has been great.

Of course, dude. I'm so stoked. The book is fascinating, and your life truly is, it's hard to fully believe because you see sort of tidbits of it. Like, you know, the short version is a kid born into a cult with a chess-obsessed cult leader that then effectively kidnaps you from your family, from your mother specifically, and raises you with a divine purpose to become the greatest chess player of all time. and you're given this identity and then the identity kind of falls apart and then there's a new identity

born out of that that brings upon you know a chess revolution instills you with power and then you all of a sudden are dealing with the elements of this cult inside of you as sort of like a very brief overview

of the whole story that was like a movie trailer for the book right there it's crazy I love that now a lot of people are probably seeing your face if you're from the chess community everyone knows who you are

you've been chess famous for a long time I mean, coming from a chess prodigy to now being, you know, the face in many ways of Chess.com, one of the co-founders of Chess.com. People from the chess world will know you, but people tangential and outside the chess world probably saw you for the first time, maybe on the Netflix documentary. Yeah. Which was recent. Yeah. And it goes through, you know, the massive, you know, cheating scandal as it's been put out with Hans and Magnus. So can you just sort of give context to that scandal and really how it all, like, kind of brings up? broke for you just sort of in brief, and then, you know, the Netflix documentary putting you

onto this, like, national platform. Yeah. Well, thank you for that intro. Yeah, it was, what a wild few years it has been for the chess world. And I won't jump to how the scandal made its way into my book. I'll save that if you want to get into that, because initially, everything you just talked about in terms of my story was what I thought I'd be talking about over the last couple years, but then this scandal happened. And for those wondering, it's Netflix untold, which is their sports investigation, kind of ongoing sports doc series. And it's called Netflix untold chessmates. And so Magnus Carlson, greatest chess player in the world today, most people believe the greatest player of all time accuses a young American named Hans Neiman of cheating at a tournament in

2022 in St. Louis, the St.field Cup. That is what happened. That is the actual thing that happened. Almost everything that came after that to some wild degree was, some of it was literally fake news, given viral life on social media that has led to a storm of interest and fascination around the idea that there was a sex toy involved. We'll talk about that. And then on the other spectrum, there were factual things that happened because that didn't happen. There were factual things that happened that were all sort of the fallout of this, this sort of crazy moment in time. Because when Magnus accused Hans, the thing that was happening on our end was chess.com was in the middle of an acquisition of the played Magnus group of companies, which was 13 companies using Magnus's name and likeness. He was one of the co-founders of it.

And this had been many, many months, almost a year in the making that no one had really known about. But it had kind of just become public news because we were very close to finishing the deal. And so for the first time in a long time, Magnus and I have done things together for years. And we've both been kind of faces and figures in the chess world. But we had always been like two ships in the night, not on one team. And so for the first time in a long time, people were saying, oh, like Danny Wrench and Magnus are on the same team now. And this had only been like for two weeks. So the reason that's relevant is because one of the biggest accusations that was made is that because Hans Neiman was being accused of cheating,

what then came rapidly to light was that Hans Neiman had a history. history of cheating on my site, on chess.com. That is factual. Again, Hans, even to this day, has sort of changed his story, denied the extent of the cheating. I don't really care about that. What was factual was Hans was caught cheating. He confessed. He was closed. We helped him rehabilitate sort of privately for a couple of years. While we're helping Hans rehabilitate, he becomes one of the best players in the world. But the top players were never settled about the fact that they know he had cheated, even if it was kept secret. Now Hans is playing on these big stages in St. Louis, having never really reconciled his past yet, gets accused by Magnus in the middle of his acquisition,

and then Danny wrench and chess.com gets sort of thrown into the middle out, this must be a conspiracy between Magnus and Danny. Danny must have told Magnus that Hans cheated or, and I'm just sort of like planting the seeds of a lot of what happens and what they cover on the Netflix documentary. I get into, you know, all of this from my side. I think in much better detail in my book, just because that was, I guess I will wrap a ribbon on that really quickly. What ended up happening was this is actually going down

while I'm already in the middle of writing my memoir. And so the chess world even to this day has like had thoughts that I wrote this book because of the scandal. They don't know. Like the scandal was a pain in the ass for the entire process because we were trying to write a book about my life, what you already talked about, being raised in a cult, taken away from my mom,

chess-obsessed cult leader. and I happen to be one of the leaders of shess.com, that was already like a movie in a book. People were already interested, and then the scandal happened in the middle of it, and my partner's at Hachette, the publishing company, they're like, Hachet's like, well, you got to include this. I'm like, I can't even talk about this right now.

I'm getting sued. So the whole thing got delayed by years while we were in the middle of this lawsuit, this massive scandal. Two years later, the Netflix dot comes out. My book has come out this year. And so it has just been a wild ride And I guess I blew right past the punchline

If there is anybody possible still listening to your podcast Who doesn't know that one of the things that happened was People said well how could he cheat in plain sight Somebody in a random chat room of the internet said Maybe he used vibrating anal beads You know they have Bluetooth vibrating anal beads That's the rumor This goes to Twitter and before even fact-checking anything

Elon Musk retweets it It hits every major news cycle And so I guess I was just sort of probably bouncing around a lot that's because when a story like this happens and you go, who's writing this? Like you do bounce around a lot because nobody saw what was coming.

Accusations of conspiracy, accusations of sex toys, accusations of the world's oldest game being caught up in like the AI cheating revolution all in one moment and seen. And here we are. Yeah. Hey, real quick,

most people who watch this channel aren't subscribed. And when you subscribe, you help the channel grow and you stay in the loop with every new drop. religion camp, history camp, and camp gagnon. Now, let's get back to it. And for me, being again, a chess casual, I watched the documentary and the way it's sort of framed is like,

you know, you have this young up-and-comer in Hans, who's a bit arrogant, a bit pompous, but really talented and, like, wants to shake up the world. You have Magnus kind of representing the old guard at this point, you know, the greatest of all time, the goat, and gets this massive upset, Hans wins. And, you know, now chess.com, It's sort of told that way like, oh, are they colluding

and are they doing this big cover up against this young guy that's trying to shake it up? And it's done in an interesting narrative way. You mean in the Netflix talk? Yeah, yeah. And you watch it and you come away with an impression of you. But then I read your book and seeing your whole life that you at least represented in the book,

which is probably only a portion of the totality of what you went through growing up in this cult, it recontextualizes your frame. Because it's like, oh yeah, like, You're kind of represented as like, you know, you guys are strong. You're in an office. You got all this leverage and power. It's like, oh, this guy is probably, you know, some, you know,

some fraternity guy that went to like an Ivy League school that's, you know, is he even really about chess? And then I learned your actual story. And it's like, oh, my goodness, the irony of how this whole thing plays out. So let's just go all the way back to Arizona to a little town, Tonto Village. Tell me about this place where you grow up and what makes it a couple of? cult. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. So I love how we're Tarantinoing this, by the way. And I didn't know when I met you right before Flagrant that you hadn't, I guess in hindsight, I know you hadn't read my book

yet, but you had seen the Netflix doc. So I wonder what you must have thought to at the time, like you have no idea. Yeah, I just assume it's like an executive. It's a suit, you know? Not a high school dropout from a cult in Arizona who at all, if anything in the book, I'm like, who am I to be deciding anything about this situation? How did I get here? Right. And so it only came up because we were at an event and I made a, comment to you about religion or something. Yeah. And I like, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, oh yeah, like, are you religious? And you're like, funny mention that. I was like, I was very religious. And I was like, well, what do you mean? You're like, well, I grew up a cult. I was like, so here we are. Yeah. That's right, we were at Schultz's, uh,

battle event for charity. Okay, Padel event, okay. All right, so yeah, I was born into the church of the immortal consciousness. So I was born into a family, human baby, but I was born into a cult, like many people who are born inheriting the religion of their parents, right? You inherit the practices and whatever church they're in, I guess technically you're kind of born into, right? No baptisms in this particular church, which a lot of babies, I guess, experience if we're staying on the line of what you're born into.

But I was born into the Church of a Moral Consciousness, which is now something I have come to name as a cult, which is its own experience when you're raised in something, any type of like structural. or sort of like, you know, religion or dogma you take for granted, I think developing your own awareness of an ability to kind of like be honest with yourself about it is its own journey that people can relate to or not. But I do say and name it as a cult. And when people understand what I went through, you'll be like, why did it take you so long? It was definitely a cult. But my parents were Steve and Debbie. And they were two of the earliest founding members of the collective, which is what we grew up calling it. Either the family or the collective was sort of the

terminology. The Church of a Moral Consciousness was founded by two people, Stephen and Trina Camp, spelled K-A-M-P, not with a C. Sorry to bring a bad. Funny, funny for this one here. But Trina Camp claimed to be a channeling medium, a trance medium, which there's different types of people who claim to channel. Again, not going to get into all that. For those who want to, you can be Googling this right now, but she claimed a type of trance, which is known as Phenomena Mediumship, which is she didn't like receive messages consciously. She would actually in a dark room, people would sit around completely leave her body and a different voice would come through and talk through her. So I grew up in this environment. This spirit,

Dr. Duran, was sort of the entity providing kind of the teaching. If you say there was a religion, he would say that there, he would actually would say that he was never here to preach a religion, that there was like a teaching and advice, but how it was then used in practice was sort of put in play by Stephen and Trina and eventually by my dad, because my dad left my mom right after I was born and actually married the oldest daughter of Stephen and Trina Camp. My dad was 38. She was 19. There's a lot of other just dynamics that went down in the collective that would make you turn your head and go, wait, say what? There was a lot of stuff like that. But to stay on my childhood, I was born into the collective, basically kind of the bottom of the totem pole, especially because

my dad left Debbie and married Marlowe, the oldest daughter of the two boys. and my dad effectively became like the number two in in the cult but I didn't even know my dad was my dad until I was seven or eight years old yeah because of a weird a weird way the family dynamics work the politics and the stuff that went down were were messy we're probably getting into all that but just to quickly get to where chess comes in and then I'll let you poke and I can continue to unpack more dynamics of it I basically was just a regular village kid like any any other kid in the collective doing my thing we were dirt poor it There was communist living, ran around with no shoes, backwards.

Like we were, we were like, you would look at this and say a bunch of rednecks living in the village, but it wasn't a bunch of rednecks. It was or, I mean, that's a debate. But we were a, we were a spiritual collective kind of trying to live off the grid in a northern Arizona town called Tano Village. And everything about that life was a normal life of a kid who was dirt poor in a cult until I was nine, the summer of, Summer of 95 was when I watched the movie searching for Bobby Fisher and learned to play chess, and I'll pause there for station identification and let you guide where we go from there.

That was how I got into the game at that age. Now, people think of a cult, and the initial assumption is, okay, it's a bunch of people in robes and there's, like, control, and you can't leave or else they'll kill you or kill your family. And, you know, there's, like, all sorts of, like, weird, like, money and, you know, sex and power. and like they assume things. And then, you know, they think of the members and they're like, oh, yeah, these are like people off the rocker.

These are like, you know, deranged, like traumatized mentally ill people that join a cult. In your experience, who are the people of a cult? How would you characterize your parents? Are they, you know, spiritual mystics that got brainwashed? Like, how do you just define this as someone that grew up in it? Yeah, it's a really good setup because you and I talked about this a little bit last night. I would say that from the outside looking in, the collective was just a bunch of normal people. My dad was a practicing attorney.

There was another practicing attorney in the collective. A lot of people were running kind of just upstanding jobs, general contractor here, car mechanic there, schoolteacher here. And I think my parents do have their own path. My dad grew up, grew up wealthy, kind of turned his back on parents' money. At one point, was a practicing Buddhist, became an attorney, kind of found himself, lost himself in a number of ways and we'll get into that later. My mom lost both of her parents young was probably more in line with you would say a traveling hippie mystic, mystic hippie,

kind of looking for the answers and meaning to life who found Dr. Duran, found Trina Trancing, and then ultimately moved to the collective with my dad when they got married. So I don't want to debunk and say that some of that wasn't true. I think there were different people in different camps. But as far as how the collective operated, this was not like anything that the outside world would have sort of looked at. It immediately said like, you know, this is weird, right? This is just a bunch of normal people having kids trying to sort of keep to themselves in a small town, right, in Arizona. And I think it's interesting because we can talk about, and we probably will, talk about, you know, what allows these groups to work? What are the things that actually hold

a group like that together when the proverbial kind of shit starts to hit the fan. Why do people stay? Why do people engage? There are and were abusive things that went down. There were like undeniable like power manipulation and money control stuff and really kind of fucked up shit that happened. But there also like there weren't some of the other boxes in terms of sexual abuse at least by the immediate like leaders.

There were some things that went down that aren't necessarily told in my book because they weren't my story to tell. But there are some things there that we can get into. But to answer the question, I guess a little more directly, I would say that I actually have been talking a lot during this kind of, you know, accidental mini book tour I've been on to kind of say that I think one of the dangerous things about a cult is the assumption that somebody has to be broken, deranged, traumatized,

or an other way like lost to find themselves in one of these groups. I think that one of things people underestimate is that a lot of the dynamics of small-knit communities can be super attractive to all different types of people, including very ambitious, very growth-oriented, like people who are obsessed with the idea of self-improvement. People who are obsessed with the idea of becoming the best version of themselves, we can get into this a lot,

but there's a lot of people who you would say, I'm sure you meet, people who fit the line of, you first learn that they're really into fitness, then you learn they're really into meditation. Before you know it, they're actually really into the belief that they can unlock what is their version of highest consciousness on the planet. And I would argue that a lot of those things are actually awesome and the kind of journey that a lot of people should be on to be like, how can I become the best version of myself? But I think what's interesting is people dismiss that what can happen in that just one more step of you wanting these things, the best version of yourself, the best version of your marriage, the best version of health, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and then somebody tells you, I have the answers.

And I think what people underestimate is that a lot of, you know, very ambitious people would still love the eye. idea, that somebody has a playbook, that somebody has an idea for how they can become all those things. And again, I'll pause there because I think that that's where you can see a lot of very smart, very potentially high achieving people in these groups and where a lot of shit can go really wrong because they're willing to give away their agency and give away who they are because someone says, I have the way to get all those things. Especially in the current cultural paradigm where community has. has been lost, right?

Like there's less community now than there was 30 years ago. People describe having less friends now. There's more social isolation because the internet, all of a sudden, this community that gives you a purpose and you're competent and you have a role and everyone helps each other, it can be really appealing to a lot of people. And I had a guy in here, a great journalist named Jennings Brown.

He is a bit of like a cult journalist. And he's done many other things, but he went lived with a doomsday sex cult in California. And his kind of, findings were so fascinating. And he talks about how cults have gone digital in many ways. Because I was sort of asking the same questions, probing, like, how does this happen to someone? Like, could this happen to me?

Like, I don't understand. Yeah. And he gave a way that there's one cult leader that the way she does it. And it's fascinating that there will be like a mom's group on Facebook. And it's just like, we're moms that help each other. And it's a big group, maybe 10,000 people in the group. And some mom will come in and be like, hey, my child is like eczema. Like, how do I fix this?

And then they'll give like actual genuine good advice to fixing it. They'll say, you know, clean up the diet, maybe use this type of ointment or a lotion. And then they cure their child of eczema. And then someone will reach out to that mom and say, hey, great news. I'm so glad you took care of your kid's physical health. Now it's time to take care of your family's spiritual health. And so there's another group that's a secret group, invite only. And now there's only like a thousand people in that one.

And you go into that one and then they start giving you guides and they start giving you meditations, many of which are still helpful and productive. It's like, you know, take time to be alone and find a connection with the higher power and pray, things that are generally good. And then that leads to another step where it's like, oh, your child is bedwetting? It's probably because there's abuse.

I wonder who's doing the abuse. I bet you it's your husband. You need to get away from him. And your husband, if you bring this up to him, he's going to deny it. So then the mom will go to the husband and say, are you abusing the kids? And he's like, no, what are you talking about?

And then she goes, the cold leader is right. Which again, they're not thinking cold leader. They're like, my spiritual guy. my mentor. They were right. So then they separate them and the person in charge of the group connects them with a family down in Florida, down in Georgia, where they can go move in and get away from the toxic environment. And then from there, you have to buy in subscriptions. You have to start paying money and tithing. And so then they're isolated from the family. They're disconnected. They're doing this trying to help their children, which is like the highest calling a mom can have,

right? Like I'm going to support my family. And then over time, they're just completely isolated and dependent on the rest of the people in the organization. And I heard this sort of sort of this tail and I was like, I completely understand how a good natured person that's a little bit scared and wants the best for their kids can get completely wrapped up in this world. And it gave me a lot of empathy for people that are in these kinds of environments where maybe I would have brushed them off and said like, oh yeah, these are whack chops. They're normal people, many of which. That's fascinating. Crazy, right? I, first of all, thank you for sharing that. I had never heard of that. It doesn't surprise me at all. What I have heard, one of the things that's happened since

coming out with my story and like, you know, I joke again, I was on a bit of a tour. I did like kind of every, every cult podcast and not everyone. I'm sure there's people like, oh, but I did a lot of them, a lot of the big ones especially. And one of the last ones I was on was with Sarah and Nippy. They were actually part of a Netflix documentary on the Nixium cult, the Val, if anyone wants to see it. And so I've actually been on their podcast twice now and become friends with them. And I will say that she educated me on not that specific.

cult, but on a number of have gone digital cults and these types of tactics. And again, it's not that surprising because, like, you're praying on fear. Everyone hears that. And there's a lot of things that pray on fear, right? And we can get into all different types of ways that religion and storytelling in general have been weaponized to pray on fear, regardless of we talk about the potential benefits. Like, we can save that for later. But there's all kinds of just ways that that has been going on forever, but it's also dangerous and kind of frightening to hear from Sarah in this story to see how the tactics are evolving in some ways. And in some ways, people are getting smarter about exactly what type of fear you can pray on at arm's length. What type of fear can you effectively

prey on online without meeting a person in person? And you literally just like, I was sitting here like, the camera wasn't on me. I'm like, no, I'm like, oh my God, that's like scary as a dad. I had never heard of that. But that's exactly the type of thing that like my wife and I would go to. Like, You start Googling some health advice. You get down a road and a lot of natural stuff is like where people should be looking because we've got so much bad food and so much just toxic crap that kids are exposed to. It's like get them off dairy. First thing. You know, my daughter had eczema and like that was literally it.

Right. So I guess what I'm saying is yeah. And when it comes to my group, as much as what you were saying and I was on the edge of my seat, at first I was going, that sounds like a way a cult would modernize and move into the digital age. but it's not exactly applicable to mine. And then I thought about it and I was like, wait a second, there's actually a lot of similarities to that. I mean, when we talk about my story with my mom, there was like this.

So my mom and dad entered the collective together. Very quickly, their marriage didn't make it. My dad rose through the ranks, power hungry, decides to marry this younger woman, has like a different perspective about his place in the teaching. I'm kind of just framing that side of it without even getting into my overall relationship with my dad and kind of, you know, as I've learned, his different perspective about stuff.

But my mom was basically, like, demonized. She was like Scarlettered. Now her whole marriage with Steve Wrench was sort of like this, you know, she was sort of the bad one as far as why it didn't work out. And at the same time, because she's now in this group that is completely financially merged, has complete control over not just like her ability to do anything on her own, but also like she now has a base. and she's still being fed spiritual advice that even if all these things are wrong with you and

these are the reasons Steve didn't love you want to be with you, we can still help you fix them. Right. So you become like just super dependent on the system and you're trapped. And that's before we even talk about how the reason you were there to begin with is because you had already like signed a covert contract, as I like to say. Like you had signed something that you never knew you were signing, which is like you believe that like somebody has the answers to your spiritual self-war. worth. And like the moment you do that, until you like, and I've had my own journey on this,

until you decide for whatever decision you make in the end, whether you believe in a higher power or not or your higher power is just, I want to be the best version of myself to help the world before I die. There can be all kinds of ways people find something to pull them up. And I'm a big believer in that, whether it's God or anything else, we need things to try to grow to. But if you've given away the idea of what decides your spiritual self-worth, like, you have signed a pretty heavy covert contract. And even if you're a smart person, like, you know, a lot of what really makes you tick is sort of under the, you know, it's under the control of another person.

Yeah. Right. And so I think that what you're deciding there is like this woman has sort of, you know, signed a covert contract that these people are in charge of keeping her family safe because of this one miracle they performed and then their ability to get rid of this evil husband, even though he wasn't. And it just sounds really screwed up. But it's, it's hard for people to kind of get out of those because,

they're not even in touch with the covert contract they signed. Yeah. You know. Now, your dad's remarriage to the cult leader's daughter seems like a pretty calculated move. Yeah. So there's a thing within the cold as you lay out on the book called the like vibration. Yeah, I should probably dive into that a little bit. So like, yeah.

I guess my question is, you know, does your dad leave your mom because he's trying to move up? Does he truly fall in love with this girl? Is it like a power play? Is it arranged by Stephen and Trina? at the top? Like, what do you think happened? So it's a great question. And we're going to dive into that. Let me, let me say that probably describing a couple pillars of what Duran's teaching was before we talk about how it was weaponized and used and or as justification for a 38-year-old guy to marry a 19-year-old girl. Like, I think I should talk about a couple of those pillars real quick,

because I think it helps. Agreed? Okay, cool. Breaking the fourth wall, everybody. This is awesome. So we're going to talk about that. fundamentally Duran's teaching was both like Western Judeo-Christian and very Eastern religion philosophy base. It was kind of a best of a lot of things.

Not because it was like a pick and choose kind of like buffet. It did have some things that like it believed in as like a doctrine. But when I start describing it, people go, oh, that's interesting. Because here's the thing. Duran would say there were many prophets who had come and gone from Jesus to Krishna to Buddha to whatever

you want to say. That there are all types of paths to God, if you call that becoming your higher self, but that fundamentally and undeniable truth is that karma is real, which is the golden rule in practice, that that's a good thing when you think about it in a singular lifetime existence, due unto others as will be done under you, but that it breaks down scientifically if you don't embrace the idea of reincarnation. And the reason that's important is because even if you and I are practicing the golden rule, how are these two, you know, white guys justifying their time in New York, while right now there's a kid dying in blood dime in Africa.

And there's another woman who's probably dying in Ukraine as we speak. I'm sorry to be dark, but like when you look at the world as a singular lifetime existence, it's pretty hard to balance the scales. You just can't. And the reason Duran would say that's important is because part of what you have to understand is that reincarnation is this idea that you are a soul having a physical lifetime to learn and then you will do it again as long as you need to learn. So that we are basically spiritual beings having physical experiences

to learn. Again, I would say that the idea of you having a soul or being a spiritual being here to learn is by itself pretty benign and maybe actually sounds interesting, right? The next step of that is that one of the tools that we use to get back to our higher self as this soul having a physical experience is we find our soul pod, our soul group. These are also terms that have been used by many gurus and different things under the belief if you believe in it in terms of a spiritual evolution type of religion, i.e. karma, i.e. reincarnation, the idea that you have souls you've embodied with before, because you're all growing with each other back toward the source. Call it the one, call it God. Doesn't matter what you call it. This idea actually exists in a lot of different religions. And in Duran's teaching, it was like,

hey, you're all a part of a soul group. But the most intimate relationship you have in a soul group is your like vibration, which is L-I-K-E vibration. And this idea stems from something some people may have heard of or not in different religious philosophy is not just that we're married, science and spirituality here, that the Big Bang was more than space-time matter. Big bang was actually an explosion of consciousness, and that some have called it the cookie-dough theory, which is there was one big ball of cookie dough, and it became a lot of cookies. And we all embraced this because we are all the original creator. And part of the reason we played the game for keeps is we all agreed to one contract, which is while you're playing the

game, you choose to forget. Otherwise, how do you play the game for keeps? So I'm setting the tone to describe some things that make a lot of sense. And we're talking to smart people who've maybe been to hell and back with organized religion, but can't deny the miracle of not why am I here, but how am I here? You start to speak a language of where science and spirituality might actually make a lot of sense if there was a world that we all came from one place, trying to become the best versions of ourselves. I would understand why we need to choose to forget, at least temporarily, before we go back to the astral realm and the Akashic records where all these like soul, you know, diaries are kept. And this is important because you can kind of understand

that in a collective environment where smart people eventually take these next steps, there's a fundamental buy-in that isn't that crazy, or at least if you're a believer in any kind of metaphysical, or maybe someone's listened to this podcast and it's like never heard that story I just described of existentialism and kind of where it comes from, it's an interesting take on science and spirituality. And I wouldn't even say now we can Tarantino, where do I feel now? But I think there's maybe some truth. There's some interesting stuff. Now we're in a body. And we're a soul having a physical experience. Our soul growth is more important than anything in this individual lifetime.

And in fact, if that's the case, what your soul needs is more important than anything biological. Your biological experience is actually the temporary one, not your soul. So again, we're kind of barely slipping into the, okay, but where does this go next? Well, now, if a like vibration is the most intimate relationship, because in this explosion of cookie dough, what happens in the universe everything does what it expands and contracts expands and contracts so souls are on their way back to the source all the time all of us are we're all having different lifetimes and we expand and we contract this is a constant draw the perfect Taoism the perfect spiritual symbol of of infinity right as you move back and you're on a similar vibration with people that's the most important relationship but if your soul is saying my soul is

connected to this woman it doesn't matter that she's 19 or that much younger because our souls are actually the same. Our souls are of this very old nature. And she's actually my soul-like vibration. The biological boundaries that, you know, that keep us apart according to the made-up rules of the earth plane are kind of bullshit. Right. And so, again, we went on an interesting journey until you start to see how human beings may be giving into their base desires, their base chakra desires, not their highest chakra, if we're using the terms they would use, are now about to like justify and start to take action toward things that like fundamentally you would say are like that does that's not okay but everybody's on board and the buy-in is interesting

because now you know and you're not taking for granted kind of what got them there right if this is true then this is true and if that's true and now justify my motives here I can justify this thing here and so what end up happening is a lot of marriages and I described this in the book what happened with my mom and dad was sad and intimate to me and obviously you know years of therapy here don't worry. We'll talk about all the things. But like, it wasn't that uncommon. There were other kids that experienced similar things where it's like messy divorces, older men, marrying younger women, somewhere cases where it went the other way. But for the most part, it was like a lot of like permiscuity, just a lot of like, even if it wasn't plural marriage, I got into this with Rain,

Wilson on his podcast, Sullivan, where he was like, well, it was kind of like polygamy. I'm like, not really actually. No, polygamy is a different thing. It was not pool of wives. And he's like, yeah, but the ability to have this open door policy of changing your mind on who your spiritual like vibration is. So anyway, he and I had an interesting debate about that. I'm actually very careful not to fully apply. I think there are a lot of things that apply across different religions where I think anytime somebody, anytime even mainstream religion crosses the line between saying, let me help

you ask life's big questions to help you become the best version and say, I have all the answers is, in my opinion, where any religion becomes a cult. Because to me, what defines a cult is not God. It is not even ritual. It isn't community. It's how people treat each other is what makes occult infrastructure work, right? And I think that that's important because it doesn't matter whether you believe in God. It doesn't matter whether you are spiritual or whether you have rituals of prayer or meditation that are good for you.

I would say none of that is fundamentally what made this a cult. What made this occult was not the teaching or even a lot of things I just described. It was the teachers and how they used it, right? It's the people that make occult work, not any of the spiritual underpinnings. And so to end on that, I know that's a lot. I would say that my dad now leaves my mom under the auspices of the idea that he's found his like vibration. This is like a big spiritual revelation.

My dad, like, claimed that this was a big thing. What I would learn later, and again, not all of this is in my book because there were things that belonged in the written form. And there were things that I'm, it's not that I don't want to talk about them. It just didn't make as much sense. is like there was also, I've skipped past a lot of things, like tons of alcohol. There weren't drugs in the collective, but alcohol was rampant. Trina herself, the transmedium, was an alcoholic, like an extreme one.

And so you ended up in a position where like you had a bunch of groups and people together, drunk, promiscuous. And I would learn later that in many ways my dad was actually put with Marlowe by her own mother. like in like a drunken late night process which I'll get into because I've described like vibration there are two of the things I need to describe that kind of set up my life and this teaching for people the other two and I'll get into when you want are purpose and the process so I'm going to stop there and let you decide where we go but this whole thing that happened with me in my life was that my dad left me and my mom like kind of quite literally kicked to the curb my mom is scarlet lettered he's now the number two in the

collective Mary's a 19 year old and much of this was in hindsight as a the truth would come out with years later, basically an alcoholic whim that, like, Trina had because she didn't want her daughters to be poor. And my dad was one of the wealthiest people in the collective because he was an attorney. So it's like, so there's all that. And again, my dad would, in many years, and I've worked on my relationship with him and Marlowe. And I think my dad, you know, would say that there were probably both true to him. There was a part of him that was unhappy with my mom. There was a part of him that, at least at the time, convinced himself that he was in love, whether that's true or not, but also was 100% like put with her in an alcoholic way and wanted

his cult leaders to be happy. And he's not a victim because in no way is a 38 year old man or victim if he gets with a 19 year old girl. So it's like, sorry, dad, you're not the victim here, right? But also, and he would also acknowledge that he was power hungry. So it was all those things, right? And there was this idea where he like convinced himself that she was his life vibration. And by the way, they did stay together for many years. It's just a, it's fucked up, is what it is. And we'll talk about the other things that are inherited when you believe you're a spiritual being having a physical experience. And these were the two things that I think would really help describe the group as the process and purpose. Hey guys, we're going to take a break really quick because

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and the cravings that I have. It's amazing. You get all the focus, all the energy. You still get the pouch experience, but again, there's zero nicotine and zero caffeine. So I'm not dealing with the same wired feeling or like the crash that I get from caffeine. My favorite flavor is blue raspberry. I got the watermelon right here because I already finished the blue raspberry. Ultra is the ultimate guilt-free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine and caffeine. And I have great news. If you are listening to

this program right now, when you use the code camp, you will get 15% off when you go to take ultra.com. That is take ultra.com. Use the code camp for 15% off. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them. Tell them that Mark and Christos from the campsite sent you. Now, let's get back to the show. It makes sense, even as you're describing, your dad's like, okay, I'm with this woman, but now all of a sudden I get an opportunity to be with a woman that has status.

Being the daughter of the leader is obviously a level up within this economy. For sure, for sure. She's younger, which, you know, there's a thing there where it's like, okay, well, she's 19. Like maybe that's cool if you're a guy and, you know, your mom at the time, I'm sure, the same age as your dad. Yeah, a couple years younger, but I think my dad was 38. My mom was 35 or 36. Right, which, again, is not atypicals from, you know, really powerful, wealthy people finding younger women. Yeah. So then there's that element.

And then there's also like the pressure from the leader to be like, hey, are you interested in marrying my daughter? Yep. And it's kind of arranged in a way. Yep. And yeah, it's like such a crazy situation. Again, if you're not from it, it sounds very bizarre. Now, from a philosophical perspective of the spiritual, you know, kind of practice, is Dr. Duran or was Dr. Duran ever a real person? So there were claims that Duran lived in the 15th century and that he was an Englishman. He was a doctor in England.

And I grew up being told this. I've been told that now people have research. And since my book has come out, I've been told that people have used, you know, chat GPT and other things to basically be like that person was never research. I've also been told by people that, like, you know, a lot of that stuff is just like, it wasn't recorded. It doesn't matter. But he claimed to be a, he claimed to be a 15th century doctor. And he was a student of Moses. So the sort of, I don't think I say that in the book actually. Moses from the Bible. Moses, like from the Bible.

The Duran was, died in the 15th century, been living on the astral for the last X hundred years. He's now a student of Moses. Like a lot of the teaching that he's bringing is kind of. the highest teaching of all the many masters. And that part of it was interesting because they were like, look, when you get to the right levels of God, what I just described to you as far as the single source and truth, whatever labels you put on it, they're all basically saying the same thing, which is that karma, you can like it or not is a fact.

You will reap what you sow, either this lifetime or the next, period. And there's no escaping. You will have done unto you as you have done unto others. And they would say that every real teaching at the highest level is practicing some level of this message. And consciousness is confusing for us anyway because they would say that time and space is sort of everything is happening everywhere all at once and or we don't understand it. And so there are examples of like, forget what they call it, like indigo children where like an embodiment can literally be a single soul who goes from who Jay Z's lifetimes goes from zero to the top.

It goes like they literally become Jesus in one lifetime because they just fucking get it. Right. Right. And then there are many examples where you would say that people take many lifetimes and experiences. The reason I say that is because that's who Duran was. That was like what they professed as. This is the highest teaching of anything. If you're going to, if you're going to get to the top at some point, you have to start treating others like they're your neighbor. In fact, they, not your neighbor. They argue. Right. It's a non-dualist sort of way to look at things. Exactly. And so that, that would be what he would say. Now, Trina also tranced other spirits. The first spirit she actually trance was flying eagle. There was another spirit that she trance

that I don't think I ever heard. So what's interesting is, Duran became the personality of this main entity. And I've heard people say that basically she made up the whole story of the Englishmen because she was young and pressured and actually made it up. But these same people are like, I actually don't necessarily debunk that she was channeling. I think Duran as a made up entity was like not real, right? I have no idea.

But there's been all kinds of like opinions about this. But to answer the question simply, that is the claim that he was a 15th century doctor, that he was a student of Moses. And he was not the only spirit that she channeled in her time as a medium. Are any of this Dr. Duran's like works codified? Is there a Bible that everyone works with? So there is like a...

Like in the collective, are you guys reading through like, oh yeah, well, he said this and technically he said this? Like is it building off of that framework or is it all through the medium show? It was all through trancing. But it's funny. You said that you're the first, I've interviewed a lot. You're the first person to ask that and you just made me remember something new, which is there is a book.

there is a book that was made up and written partly by my dad and partly contributed to by a lot of the other like top leaders of the collective that is supposed to be like Duran's teachings. I actually don't know where that book is. There's only one copy? You're describing it like it's like a one tone. No, it's not meant to be like Golden Scrolls like that. There is a book that was written, but it was never like published and it was not like a this is his Bible. It was that Duran was saying, hey, we've been recording. these trances for years. Like Steve, your job is to sort of take all of these transcripts and like

put together a book of my teachings. My dad did do that. I don't know where that book is. Marlow might have it. Wow. We'll get into this later. A lot of things going on with my dad. My dad actually passed away just a couple months ago. So in addition to my book coming out and a lot of really hard shit in my relationship with the man, he did just die. And so I like legit, I'm in the middle of this process of figuring out some things like this. So I actually, I actually think that that book exists somewhere. And, and who knows, maybe at some point I'll get enough questions from people that published. I mean, the transmediamship thing is an interesting sort of practice within a lot of like spiritual kind of mystical circles. And we've done episodes about like the raw tapes. Are you

familiar with this? Like the law of one. Yeah. Well, I thought you were going to go to the telepathy tapes, which is a whole other thing. Yeah, yeah. Same but different. But like the raw tapes were specifically it's a philosophy, a religion, kind of. I don't know really know how to classify it. Sorry if that's what you belong to. But it was a medium, a woman and a guy and another guy. And one of the guys was actually a professor of like something, like a legitimate, like academic.

And she was basically acting as a medium for the god raw of ancient Egypt. And this God told this woman and these two other guys that were there, the secrets of the universe. And they recorded everything and wrote it all down. And it's available now as a. religious philosophy. Oh, fascinating. And it's touching on a lot of the same kind of things. It's all, very non-dualistic. It's like, you know, we are all one. Our consciousness is united. I'm you, you or me. And then also a lot of like practical rules for like how to live life. And you read it

and you're like, there's a lot of interesting stuff in here. Like it's actually not all bad. Like there's a lot of just like sort of grounded kind of spiritual work. And there's many of these. I mean, Alistair Crowley is, you know, said to have channeled different entities that caused him to write books. And so it's a thing that you see kind of coming up time and time again. But as far as the actual way that it plays out, like, I'm sure people are thinking like, okay, this philosophy, there's kind of a Bible, there's like a high priestess. Is there a church? Like, is there a place you guys go on Sunday and everyone gathers?

Like, what is that version? Yeah. So, by the way, it's fascinating. I didn't know about that. I should apparently because now I'm getting pulled into more of this stuff that I You're not alone. I grew up in it and I took it for granted and or was blind to. aspects of it that were like weird, right?

And then let alone parts of some of it that may like, if you want to say, doesn't necessarily ring truth or does, depending on your interpretation, but it at least has been repeated before. Like it's out there, right? It's interesting. So our regular way of living, and this will be good because I think this will get us

into the process. Basically, the collective operated on on this sort of environment, which was people were financially merged, living in a small group of really like a couple dozen houses at its peak more than 300 people. So I grew up as a kid sharing bedrooms with like 10 to 12 kids who were not my siblings, let alone my brother Josh,

which was some my mom had after me from a different guy who was like literally in and out of the collective in one night and long story. But you grew up in a financially merged collective, a spiritually merged collective, sharing houses and bedrooms, which is partly because we were just dirt poor, partly because one of Duran's teachings or goals of the environment was that in a community setting, you would learn to base your relationships not on physical comfort, but on the fact that you kind of have to live on top of each other, so get to know each other. And also these kids are your kids.

And these kids are your kids, right? And you're all part of the same soul pods. So why, you know, all that stuff, right? So that was like the setting. there were trances on Sundays. So that part of it you would say was kind of a church thing. Most of the trances were adult only trances. As I grew up as a kid, there were sometimes this Sunday as kids only trance.

It would be like once a quarter there'd be like a kid's only trance. And those were like some of my first exposure to Duran. This is like vacation Bible school. Exactly. Right. In fact, we did have like Sunday school and which would be a combination of actual Bible teachings, actual teachings of like life and teachings of the masters of the Far East, like gurus of like of hinduism and buddha so you have like the world's like prophets like ganesha and

christina we have all these like prophets we were sort of raised on there's a lot of these like amazing saints that have happened they were all the embodiments of what's funny is so i'm going to a small tangent here judeo-christian society has sort of claimed the term christ because they have made jesus the number one idol of all time christ consciousness is actually a thing that everybody is trying to attain, right? Jesus's name was like Joshua, was Yeshua, right? And he became the Christ, but the idea of reaching Christ consciousness is not something that Jesus actually owns.

Sorry to debunk any Christians out there. That's actually a thing that is like people have been like trying to aspire to become the highest consciousness, right? So we were kind of raised understanding that, that there's actually been a lot of different Christ in the body, right? Jesus happens to be the most famous in our Western world, right? I think there's some devotions of like, Krishna followers that say that Christ is an avatar of Krishna.

Yeah, that they're all the same. Right. Actually. So we grew up in like a Sunday school, like maybe once a quarter there was a kid trance. As I got older into my early adolescence, I share the story in the book when I, you know, was given my purpose in trance and we're going to talk about that. But like, the basic environment was just a very small dirt poor community, living off the grid, generally operating on their own with a school that was kind of just for the collective. It was called the Shelby School, which was named after Stephen and Trina's second daughter, third kid, second daughter, Shelby. So it was the Shelby

School, where all the kids went. The Shelby School, by the way, would go on to be known as one of the most successful chess teams in the history of the U.S., which is a crazy thing now for everyone who grew up watching me be a chess prodigy to then learn all this stuff. But so the Shelby School is the school of the cult. Kids go there. We practice these different beliefs and systems of how we can all live by the golden rule. Karma is a fact. Reincarnation is a fact. All these different Christ-like figures have existed.

We experienced trance on Sundays. And then Trina would also do what was called like a private, where if a couple really needed it, like their marriage wasn't doing well, or if like a family requested a private, you could get a private like circle with Duran. Like you could have a private kind of, you know, presentation. And then you would, sometimes that would be,

you would go to Trina and Stephen's house and go to their room or you would go to the transfer room. room, which was an actual building that existed in the village where the trances went down. So did any kids go to public school? So there was one year where the school was being remodeled, the Shelby School, and they sent all of us to Payson, which is interesting because if you talk to people from Payson, Arizona, a lot of them remember that. It was like this massive group of, like, cult kids that, like, took over Julia Randall in

Payson, Arizona. We were all, like, in the second and third grade because my generation of kids, we were, like, the first big group of kids that were born into the college. collective. Before that, there were adults who came as like the founding members with Trina and Stephen, and they, a lot of them brought with them like older kids, like, you know, kids in their life that, you know, they're living whatever they are. But there was like a generation of kids born from like 83 to like 87 that like would, I would say are like the first group of kids that were born into the church. Right. And so we did go to public school that year. But other than that, no, everybody, everybody went to the,

to the Shelby school as long. as the collective was running, I mean, eventually the collective will get into that, like, fell apart and all those things. But going to a public school, I'm sure the kids were like, hey, why do you guys do this? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, it was really interesting. But remember, at the time, like, the dynamic of that was very, very full of tension because we're also all sort of, like, defending it. We all, we all grew up in this, right? So, like, when kids ask you, like, hey, like, why does Trina Camp, like, what is Trance? Are, is it true? Is it true? You guys are a cult because remember how kids have like no filter too so like kids hear ship from their parents

they go to julia randall the next day they confront a third grader who's from the village and go you guys are in a cult and then i would go we're not a cult like you're in a cult or whatever you know whatever i mean i wouldn't actually say that sure but that's the energy that's the energy right and so it's interesting because you simultaneously grow up and i think a lot of dysfunctional families can relate to this which is like one of the things that makes a dysfunctional family work is there's always a secret that we are simultaneously proud of, yet we won't talk about it. There's a lot of weird things that happen where like you go, we know we're different, but we're different because we're special. We're going to protect the fact that we're special because this teaching isn't

for everyone, which is also in a weird way why we have to keep it secret. Because even though it should be for everyone, but no, we don't proselytize. We're not here to like tell anybody that they should do our life. But by the way, if anyone asks you and they actually do want to talk to Duran, send them our way. It was like, there were like all these weird messages because it's like being told that you are like being raised by the highest teaching in the universe, but also don't go blabbing about it because people think we're in a cult. Yeah. And they won't get it. They won't get it anyway, right? But also legitimately, if anyone is actually curious, yeah, send them to Stephen Camp and he'll set up a transfer them. So it was interesting because

like, it's like he would say he was always open to like expanding the collection. And that's, I think it is one of the, it is one of the natural things that an organism like that does. It like, it does want to grow. But it was also like, it was very weird. It was like shunned and be proud of this, but don't talk about it all at the same time. Right. And that was kind of the environment that we were in. And so probably gave you more than you were looking for, but that was how trance would go.

Well, explain to me the, like, details of a trance. Yeah. So Sunday, you are just an average, you know, collective member and you're walking into. a building. Yeah. So there's a... Like, what time of day is it? A dark room. It could be any time of the day because the room has been blacked out. And who calls the meeting? So every Sunday, there's the community trance. And then otherwise a trance would go down when someone usually one of the ministers, which was... But the community trance is that same time every day? Pretty much, it was always like Sunday at 10 a.m. Like almost always. You get ready? Do you have to dress a certain

way? The only... It's funny. It was so casual by design. design. It was meant to not be rigorous like other churches. That was kind of one of the one of the things that they were proud of. But also like to be respectful, the idea was you wore pants, not shorts for the most part. And otherwise you come into a blacked out room where all the windows have been painted black and blackout curtains. And there's a she would keep like a red, a red bulb light at the front of the room so that once she was sitting, she could turn it off. So everybody comes into this sort of. of like semi-circle pointing the front of the room with one row of chairs kind of missing in the semi-circle because everybody else comes in first. We all take seats. People would sing songs. There were Budgens that were sing, which are like a Hindu thing that we would sing budgins. We would sing some Bible songs. We would sing, There Are Places by the Beatles. You know the song? There are places. That's a great song, by the way. That was like a song we would sing. So I grew up knowing. So there's like, you're sort of setting the environment. Incense has been lit.

I've never got into this much detail. I love that you're asking. People haven't asked this. I want the movie of this world. There's incense that's burning in the front of the room with a red hue light bulb. As you come in, that is already a place. Because there was always someone who was like the custodian of the trance room. And the custodian, I've never got into this much detail, was sort of assigned to different people in the collective.

So whoever the custodian was, that woman or person would show up like an hour before everyone else. They would light the incense. They would make sure everything was closed. they would make sure the red bulb light work. They would make sure that everything was okay. And how long is that vocation for the custodian? It would rotate. I mean, and it wasn't necessarily like a massive ceremony.

It was just that somebody was sort of in charge of making sure that the transfer was ready. And so they would have already done that. And so as you're coming into the movie scene, incense has already been lit. In fact, has been going for a while now. The room smells of incense. Magchampa. Nagchampa, Nagchampa is the most. We'll look up the, that's like the most common, like, incense.

You've been out too long, dude. I got to know this. The smell, I actually enjoy the smell because I was raised on it. Yeah. I have it in my house, but I don't light incense that often anymore. So Nagchampa, yeah. And the red light is on, and you would come in and sit in the trance circle. And then once we get within about 10 minutes is when people would start singing.

So you don't just, like, sit down and start singing. You kind of wait. Usually then, either the trans custodian or, like, one of Trina's family members would come in. Because we've skipped past certain aspects of the dynamic. There was a very much clear hierarchy in the collective, which was part of the established power dynamics and all kinds of things that happen. But it was sort of an unspoken. It's funny, as a kid being raised in it,

you just sort of take for granted that this is just how it is. But at some point, usually one of Trina's family members would come in, and they would be the ones to say, okay, let's start singing, like either Marlow, her oldest daughter or one or for other kids or someone. Everyone starts singing. Is there a pressure to sing? Like if you're not singing, is it like, yeah, what's up with him? A little bit, yeah.

But also I would say that the room is dark and so like, um, no one is like being immediately judged. If it became like a pattern, like people would be like, yo, what's wrong with you? Why are you not celebrating trance, whatever? But overall, people wanted to sing. In fact, singing I would say was probably one of the better parts of it anyway, because in general it's like being a part of church and you're like there

and you're just kind of like sitting in a dark room and kind of trying to get your zen on. Just in a regular chair? Yeah, in a regular chair, usually like a folding chair. Comfy folding chair. What is Trina's chair? Trina's chair is much more comfortable. It's like kind of a bigger sort of cushier chair. Like a lazy boy or is like a throne?

It's more like a lazy boy, but like a wicker lazy boy with like a comfortable cushion. Okay. And like low to the ground. And her and Stephen had like bigger kind of chairs to kind of sit. and so he would sit on the, if you're facing me, he was on the left side of the light bulb, she was on the right. And so we're sitting facing here.

They both come in. Stephen always came in with her. Lights would go off. Door would be shut. Trance would begin within like a few minutes. You stop singing right when they walk in? You would keep singing. But as you're singing, they come in,

they turn off the lights, someone shuts the door. You keep singing like never really stop singing. And you basically only stop singing once Duran started speaking. And so usually Duran, Duran would come in and wait for the end of the song. And then the moment the song was over, like he would, he would kind of use that as his opportunity. There are rare times where he would come in and like immediately interrupt, like he had something to say, like a bigger, a bigger

lesson or he was immediately jumping in. There are times where he would come in and you could almost hear him and Stephen having a conversation and everyone else was going to finish singing, but you could like hear them kind of like, you know, talking about some stuff or whatever. But I'm giving you the full movie version. These are kind of all the things that would happen. Now, you know Trina's voice. You spoke into Trina. You've heard her talk.

And then when Trina is channeling Duran, is it the same voice? No. Different. Yeah. Like, is it heard putting on a lower register? It's a hundred percent of voice that could be faked. Like, so full stop, just to address that. There's no world where it was like, what are two, like, famous actors?

It's no world where it's like, I don't know, it's a, you know, Reese Witherspoon and then Morgan Freeman. It wasn't that, you know what I mean? Like, it was a voice that could be. Like I'm talking as Mark, Anam Duran. Yeah, yeah. But, and by the way, there's actually, there's a video of her transcing publicly. Like, I can find it for you and get that for you.

I don't think it's online, but I can give a few. Maybe I'll be back and we'll do this again. But it does, but the dialect was different. Her tone was different. There were aspects of it that, like, she said words differently. It was all part of a, it was all part of a very different, like, personality. So if I were to show up to a trance, I would know when Duran's talking. Yes, 100%.

Yeah, you knew. You knew of Duran, if it was Duran and not Trina. Wow. And, and then you get into the debate of, like, things that were said where you basically go, like, whether it was Duran or Trina, that was some pretty wise shit. Sure. That was really good. And then you go, okay, whether it was Duran or Trina, I don't agree with that at all.

Like that doesn't feel right at all. That actually feels a lot more like Trina's drunk than it does like a high spirit. And I'm and I'm being honest about that because I think that was also an experience that everybody had with time where you would go regardless of how we got here or even some of the fascinating, you know, goddess of raw approved spiritual teachings where you go, there might be some truth to this on a cosmic level. This teaching and this specific lesson like just doesn't make any sense. And that's where like you started to get a lot of like, human dynamics. And, and yeah, that was, that was very weird because Trina, Prino would say that, like, the whole practice of trance is a very difficult practice and that in order for her to kind of get her ego out of the way and to actually allow spirit to say what it needs to say has been her life's work, right? And what was interesting is she would acknowledge that, but then also, like, in the same tone, kind of, like, deny the idea that if she was drunk and tired, it's possible she couldn't

get her ego out of the way in that trance, right? And so I think one of the problems with one of those groups is that most people will deny, deny, deny, and then leave incredibly angry and go like, that was all fake, meaning they're great, good standing cult members until the moment that they decide that this was awful and evil. And I understand that. So I'm not judging that it's hard, it's hard to start pulling on a spaghetti thread because you're afraid of whether it will ever end. and so you tend to avoid that moment of truth. I think that, you know, the subtitle to my book is how chess saved my life. And I think that for me, one of the unique things that I felt licensed to do at a very young age,

for whatever reason, I think my wife helped with that. We can talk about all the reasons why I think being exposed to the world, seeing different things, seeing different ways of viewing life from chess, started giving me perspective at a young age where I was kind of like living inside the matrix and I feel like I gave myself license to not to not believe everything but also not to debunk everything. And I think that what I, what I started to find was this ability to go like, whether this trance is coming from Duran or a cereal box or Trina, I'm going to give myself permission unlike cult members who basically, you're either all in or you're a, you're a,

you're a gentile like sinner, right? And I think that's actually very dangerous. I think that's why a lot religion falls apart, I think not allowing people to pursue their skepticism, as I say, if something can't stand up to skepticism, then it wasn't meant for you. The truth fear is no interrogation. Yeah, exactly. So I actually think that's a very dangerous reason why religion, even for its good benefits, has been losing people because they actually are just trying to control people's relationship with God rather than let them actually explore it. Like they say they want to. It's all another thing. But I would say that like for many people, I think they weren't allowed or they didn't give themselves the permission to go, that was a fucked up trance because Trina was drunk.

And that ended up becoming a thing that would ultimately tear it apart because they were like, they were like worshipping the guru pretending they weren't seeing the cracks. Yeah. The emperor has no clothes. Exactly. They pretending they weren't seeing that there was something wrong here. And so they ended up being kind of blind faith followers instead of in the end, like I think where you could eventually land to some degree with not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Being able to go, I don't know whether consciousness can live outside the body, but I do know that I can't explain existence. And I do know that there were some things that were said that helped me. There were some things that I saw completely abused and weaponized, even if not by Duran,

by the people who were qualified to interpret Duran. And that really fucked up my life, but I'm also going to say that I think the world needs more community. I think the real problem, as I said, is not spirituality or ritual. It's like how it is weaponized to control people by telling them that you know the right way to do it versus allowing people to celebrate their own way. So I obviously have a lot of thoughts about this. But this has been a big journey to kind of come to my own terms with, so we'll just ask the million dollar question. Like, do I think trance was real? I would say trance was real for me at different times. And trance was not real at different times. And I would rather answer it based on my experience than then as a, as someone who pretends to tell

you whether the telepathy tapes are real. Pretends to tell you whether consciousness is fundamental or matter. Just read Donald Hoffman's book, the case against reality. By the way, you should have him on this podcast. That's a fantastic point of view and that there's arguments in terms of spiritual perspective and consciousness that, as I just said, why would we ever choose to forget? People who go, the game doesn't work because you would never choose to forget. And Donald Hoffman's argument is, well, actually, there's a lot of evidence scientifically throughout evolution where a species and or an animal actually doesn't see the full truth because understanding their full environment would kill them.

He talks about this with bats. He says that bats are like a really good example where like they literally live in a different universe than we do. Like it's like how dogs can hear frequencies. He talks of, he gives different examples where like it's actually not true that the truth is always the best for your survival. So it was a very interesting take on whether you and where you want to go with the idea that is space time matter fundamental is consciousness.

I mean, even our own like eyes. Like we don't see the fullness of light. We don't see the fullness. It doesn't serve us. We can't, right? And is there more to that? Is there more to seeing four dimensionally, five dimensionally that we don't understand? Who knows?

So I will get off that tangent to say that like I've been asked this a lot. I stand by what I wrote in my book, which is I was raised in a cult where spirituality was weaponized and ultimately took me away from my fucking mother, almost broke me, almost killed me. I barely survived. And none of that means that trance wasn't real. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. What I do know is that there were times when the message made a difference for me,

times where I felt like Duran actually would say things where I was like borderline, would you be okay if Trina heard that? You just told me, you just told me something about Stephen Camp and Trina that like, it almost reinforced my faith for like a brief second where I go, what the fuck, right? And there were times where I experienced things where I was like, this is real.

And there were other times where I would go like, this is insane. What would be like an average kind of trance message? Yeah, so there's a lot of transcripts on that. I actually, I think a lot of people have saved them over time. They were recorded for a long time. I'm saying this because as I continue to come out with this story, it's not my intention. And I made a very big effort not to tell stories that weren't my own. This isn't even really a cult expose because even though I'm putting a cult on blast,

you can see I'm sort of doing it in a way that is designed to ask more questions. But I expect at some point people are going to come asking for these things. And I wonder if the transcripts will get out. So the answer is they do exist some of the sermons that he gave, some of the way a trance would go down. The most common type of trance would be Duran would come through. He would acknowledge Stephen. If there was like something big happening like in the world, like he would address and speak sort of bigly to like the existential spiritual view of what was carmically happening on the planet. I remember very clearly his trance after 9-11.

I remember trances that he would talk about like war, you know, happening here or hey, this is happening here and here's what I want to say about this and like, this is what these souls are here to experience and this is this karma. Here's what you can learn. So there were times where there was like a sermon based specifically on addressing the elephant in the room in the world. Then there were times where the sermon like would sound like something out of a Bible. It would be like, hey, I'm going to tell you a story today and here's the story, right? Here's what you're here to learn as a soul. And then there were times where like he would dive immediately into just questions and just say like floors open for questions.

Most of the format was a combination of both, which is here's a quick sermon. Does anybody have any questions? And people could ask questions in the room. Wow. And that's where I would say that last part is where as Trina got older, Trance became way more just opening the floor, less sermons, which I think for a lot of people was also not just more evidence, but also more upsetting because they felt like they were losing this. I guess, whether it was Trina ever or a spirit or telepathy tapes or like a consciousness or. or she was just really good at like going into a different character, but giving like some deep shit the sermons about what our souls were here to overcome

and how to live the golden rule and how to deal with tragedy on the planet and someone died and 9-11. Those are the things people paid for. You know what I mean? That was the thing people came to see. And so when it became just questions is where the trance like immediately became the best way I can describe it is like a lot of ego. Because the moment you open the floor to like someone asking questions of a spirit,

whether the spirit's real or not, I've been in that environment. And like two things often happen. Like one, a lot of people misinterpret like the whole purpose of consciousness evolving to become the best self with, let me ask a question that feels like you're trying to get a psychic to tell you the lottery numbers. Like what would be an example of that. Like if you ask a question that's like, hey, what should I do about this?

It's like asking somebody in English a question when they, they're not even speaking Spanish. They're speaking alien. They're like, I don't give a fuck what you do about this. Right. I'm here to ask you, why are you a jerk to your wife? I'm here to ask you, like, how are you working on your consciousness? Have you dealt with your pain with your mother?

And Spirit had a different goal than the one you were trying to achieve. Now, there were times where there was advice given, well, a lot of times the best advice where I would experience, where I'm putting on my own interpretation hat, where sometimes I would go, that very much sounds like Duran and that very much sounds like Trina. I feel like I experienced that Spirit almost never would say an answer to a question because it doesn't give a shit. it's sort of asking, well, what do you think? Like, what is your soul want?

Like, tell me what you've been wrestling with. Tell me what you want out of this. Because ultimately, like, the way they think about it would be different if that was the case. It's like, this isn't, I'm not here. Also, I'm not here to impinge on your free will. I'm not here to reap the karma of telling you you should take the job or not so that when it doesn't work out, you get to say Durand wasn't real. I'm not playing that game.

And so Spirit had a very, like, clear line in terms of what it would engage with. But I think it was often the ego of the people in the room that didn't understand that line. They would just continue to pest. with what should I specifically do about X or what is this? And that was just not enjoyable. And I think as a kid who grew up in it, for better or worse, this was one of the things I also gave myself agency to judge. I would be like, are any of you people fucking understanding this?

Kind of roll your eyes. I would be like, that is not what this is about. Or even if it's not real, like, why are you asking a question about whether X, Y, girl should, like, get a haircut? Yeah. We have the answers to the whole universe. And you're asking about, like, a sports team. Yeah, exactly.

And so that's what I mean by like either there was ego misinterpretation there or on the other side, no matter what the question was, you felt like the answer was coming from Trina and Stephen and not Duran. On the other side, it would be like, that just doesn't feel like a very spiritual answer. And again, I guess I'm giving myself the right to judge it. And Spirit would say, you know, blasphemy. But I would say, well, you sound like you just want this to happen, Trina. And like, you're drunk, you know, I don't know. And so there were times where I would, I think on both sides go, whether spirit was real or not. as a kid who was born into this cult,

this isn't what I signed up for. This is not an environment that I'm liking and as the collective move toward its end, in addition to all the other shit that was going down and the money and the power and the stuff, the fundamental truth is trance was getting worse. Did people know she was drinking?

100%. That was like, it was greatly encouraging. Alcohol was a tool. Alcohol was told as a truth serum. Were other people drinking? Rampant alcohol. But like 10 a.m. at trance. 10 a.m. at trance.

Some of them would have to hide it, but some of them would be more open about it. Alcohol was such a problem. And I think that it became a thing where because Trina was an alcoholic, if the guru's doing it, everybody should do it. Right. And so there was just no denying that the alcoholism was not just rampant. It was influencing the quality of the spiritual practice, whether you believed in trans ever or not. The way it was being instituted was very much like human power dynamics. And was she ever unable? Like you kind of mentioned like some of the transes would just get just something. sidelines? Like, would people, would it just get called off? Like, hey, I'm actually too hammered today. And then everyone leave and be like, oh, that's a one. So to be clear, she drank more in afternoon trances and in privates, because the moment community trance was over, she would sort of give herself the right to kind of let her hair down. I would not, I would be remiss to say I ever experienced

her drunk in a morning trance. I think in the morning trance, the trance circles, as they were called, Sunday morning Dr. Duran is giving a sermon, especially in the good years. Like, I actually would say, I don't think I ever experienced her drunk. There were other people who were drinking. And remember alcohol was a huge part of the process. We still haven't gotten into that, which is a big part of what sort of kept the group together. And maybe I'll just dive into it now. But I would say that alcohol was abused. She was the main, if not one of the main abusers. And it was a part of the culture of this, like, true serum thing. But I think when trance was at its best, she wasn't drinking, even if other people were. But a lot of times privates or or trances in the afternoon, you just like,

it was a different experience. And how long was the trance? Like from the moment you walk, usually about an hour. Okay. So usually you would, you would get in probably the first three to five minutes people were still singing. Um, then, then, you know, Duran would come through. And if there was a sermon, we're talking like, you know, 10 minutes, 10, 15, maybe. Um, maybe a longer one could be 20. There were long ones and there were, you know, there were also short ones of five minutes. But we'll say anywhere in that gap and then there was like open the floor for question. There were also times where Duran would give the sermon and then say,

Trina's not up for questions today. Like, I love you all goodbye. That was also great. Sometimes a really powerful sermon. Sometimes the sermon was like. Mike drop. It was like, you're all in trouble because you're not practicing the golden rule that I've taught you to do

and like Mike drop and we're out. There were sometimes where that would happen to you go. That really felt like it was Trina was pissed and not Duran. But again, I'm trying to paint the honest picture because I think people would want to know there's nuance. And I think people often don't want to know there's nuance because they'd rather sit in the black and white. It was either all real or not. But again, I think that's what a cult member wants.

I think if you actually want to understand, I think it's good to poke and pull at all types of skepticism, just like I think it's good to be open and not pretend that you fucking know the answer to whether consciousness is fundamental or space time. Like, we don't. So I think there was a lot of stuff. But there were also times where Trina Duran would mic drop. and be like, hey, we're not open for questions today. Like, this is not, this is. Sometimes Duran would say, hey, Trina's not up for it. Sometimes Duran would say, like, that's it.

I'm going now. And then everyone would sing at the end. And then they process out. Usually we ended with, um, usually we ended with there are places. Wow. That is so interesting. How many people are there, roughly? Let me do the mental math of the chair.

So it's like Trina, Stephen, the two other ministers, which are Stephen Marlowe. Also on the far wall is like higher up. in the collective like Trina's children and like depending on I try not to use names like people who had more status mostly because of money. So you've got like eight to 10 people on like the main wall and then like you have the half circle facing which is a row of like five by five so like 25 here and then like five by three so 15. So like you could get like 40 to 50 people in the trans room. Got it. Wow. Yeah, that's the layout. I mean at some point I know people will probably also want to visit it but this house is now owned by someone else who lives in

town a village. They were never a part of the collective. I won't say the address, but this house, they probably don't know that their basement was used for the trance room for many, many years. And then when everyone walks out, like, when I leave church, I might turn to my wife or my parents and we talk about, you know, the sermon, we talk about the homily. We talk about like kind of what's going on and like how it was. Is there a discussion? Yeah, it's funny. Leaving trance was one of the more awkward things. But I love how much detail you're asking. This is interesting for me. I haven't gotten into this, this level of detail a while. So one of the things that happened in trance. It's funny you ask is everyone had to take off your shoes. It's a carpeted room.

And part of like being in a meditation experience, there were many times where we would have trance without chairs as well, where you're sitting sort of cross-legged style and like a lotus pose or whatever. That was hard on a lot of people's bodies, especially as people were, you know, drinking more and yogaing less, right? So as people like, that's the honest shoot. There's like, people weren't like ready to sit in a meditation pose for an hour, which by the way should have also been a sign because it's like, never mind. So everyone had to take off their shoes. And so one of the most awkward parts of leaving trance

is like everyone kind of comes out and gets their shoes on. Well, sometimes if someone like got their face ripped off, it was like really awkward to be around that person. Even, and that was one of the power dynamics that started happening. Duran didn't do a lot of that early on, but it became more and more intense at time. Like one guy would just get reamed. One man or woman, right?

Or like a kid has told their purpose. It's a big day. At 12, right? You know the story. That's my life. And like the getting your shoes back on while everyone is around if you were sort of on the hot seat proverbially and or the subject of the trance could be like a really difficult experience to have everybody around you. So that's like one extreme dynamic. There were other times where depending on how the trance went like Trina and Stephen would say like, hey, let us out first.

And like they would leave and it like could be awkward where like people like, oh, Duran and Trina are mad at us and that kind of thing. there were most of the time the experience would be people would leave and everybody would kind of slowly get their shoes on and if there was a good trance people were like oh duran stormer was beautiful today and people might chat a little bit often sunday like in the community was like it was like a barbecue day so there was also a lot of like hey like everyone's getting together at mics later and like get your shoes on and people would go home and do their you know do their chores and everybody would meet at mics for a barbecue right and so most of it i would say fell 75% of the time falls into that category. Awkward or not, for the most part, people are just getting their shoes on, which naturally leads to mingling, naturally leads to conversation. If someone, I mean, I'll show this, because I did talk about this in the book that people were moved around a lot, right? People were moved in and out of different homes. I probably lived in a dozen homes before I was 10. So it's like an army type of lifestyle, but in like one village and living in with different families and different like dynamics and there was all kinds of stuff that would go along with that. Part of it was

because we were dirt poor and people would have a new kid and this family because they're having a new baby deserves slightly more space. So let's put them at South Fork and Danny and Debbie and Josh, you guys are out. You're moving into this lot and whatever. Like so there was a bit of like a musical chairs with the houses, which was very hard because you never could be comfortable. You were never attached in some ways that you just lacked a fundamental sense of like safety and security. Yeah, what is home? Right. But then there was also like the occasionally you got to move in with your friend. I'm like, oh, I get to live with Paul again? Sweet. I'm living with Paul again. So it's awesome. And so now it's awesome, right, as a kid. And so one of the things that would happen on Sunday is often

Sunday would be moving day. So if there were moves going down, everybody was helping. And that meant young men and the men mostly. Like it was usually like the older men. And then as I became one of the stronger men than I would be like, all right, we're moving. Hey, everybody, you got to come help. We're moving so and so and so and so. You also can't own anything because if you have to move on a random Sunday, it's like, get your suitcase. Yeah, like there were very few possess. you own. It was like your bed, you're like one dresser, and then like family keepsakes. So you were able to move in a couple hours? Yes, along with like, it, yeah, a couple hours total. Yes, that's a very good example way to put. In fact, that's really funny because I just realized

that like the way I first interpreted you saying that was a couple hours is like almost too long because we could throw things in a truck. But yeah, it basically with other men's helps, like no one was loading up a U-Haul. Right. Like this. was like everything fit in the back of a couple trucks. Wow. Right. And so we would move around the village and everyone's while something bad would happen where like someone would stop and one of the kids would like slam their face against like the glass of the back of the truck and then we'd all get a lecture about how we're standing up in the back of a truck. And in hindsight, I look back at those and laugh and go, you fucking idiot parents. Like you're like you're lucky somebody didn't die.

Like you're literally lucky a kid didn't die. The craziest part of the trance is that one person just gets just demolished. And like it becomes very personal that we all show up. to hear like this great sermon about something beautiful about you know cosmology and instead like you know tyler just gets absolutely rinsed yeah but for you guys it probably wasn't that weird because of the process yeah let me talk about that so so we've mentioned this a few times now for if anyone if anyone's not on the edge of their seat now you're not paying attention right this is wild so i i joke about it because i've i've cried enough tears that i can i can do that now but it so the process we've described the fundamental premise consciousness

space time. Big Bang is actually one big spiritual theory. We're all emanating back to our original source on these different vibrations. You have soul pods. You have like vibration relationships. The most intimate one is the one you're supposed to be with, your soulmate, i.e. justification for Danny's dad, who views his mom. A lot of other justifications and permiscuity under the guides of like vibration. The other two things that would happen. I want to get into both right now is, one is because you are a spiritual being having a physical experience, you also have a purpose. a purpose which is the reason you're here, the reason you chose to embody. Why did you choose to play the game again if we believe in the theory that while we're here,

we've forgotten so we can evolve to our best, we're going to go back to the astral with our guardian angels, see what we've learned and do another lifetime. You do that because you came for a reason. You came to learn something. And you also have a purpose to bring to the planet. Sounds pretty good, right? We all want to believe we have purpose and or a meaning or a reason to be here. Before we get into my story of purpose and we'll get back on the show,

train, the idea of purpose, while potentially maybe uplifting or good, also became a weaponized thing like like vibration, justification for promiscuous potential behavior. Purpose became a thing where it was like, it was often decided by Stephen and Trina. Not even by Duran. Not every purpose came down as like a spiritual ordainment like I had at the age of 12 with chess. Sometimes your purpose was as simple as your job is to fix the cars, your job is to clean the houses, i.e. like, like my mom's purpose. Was it all very practical? It was all very practical.

Like it wasn't like, be a good person. Exactly. No, you have to do this thing. Your purpose is to cut hair. Your purpose is to be a lawyer. Your purpose is to be a mechanic. Your purpose is to clean the houses. And again, not to say there weren't sometimes spiritual ribbons

wrapped around that elephant, but it was also mostly very practical. And so not everyone was being sort of told that your purpose is to use fixing cars. to even make the world a better place. It's funny because in hindsight, they could have just done a much better job with the brainwashing, which is like, tell a better story about why when someone is cleaning the houses,

they're actually cleaning the ashram of God or whatever that is, right? I think at times it became a little bit, like I said, too much alcohol and too much practicalness so that people, if they did any type of questioning about the spiritual initial premise of it, would probably have been more angry than they were, right? Many of them were good cult members and didn't do that.

And then there were some that had special, gifts. It's funny because there was a woman I grew up with who was a and is she's still around, a brilliant artist. And her purpose was like art and she would make beautiful things and then you would sell them for the collective to get money. At the same time, I think she would say that she would feel that there were times where her talents were actually very encouraged, right? So it's interesting because in any different lane, the practicalities or the way you could see that we're all here with a spiritual purpose were both weaponized and or a cool thing that people could be told if you were one of the lucky ones in that lane to pursue your passion,

right? And so it's interesting. But again, we've talked about life vibration, the idea that everyone has a purpose. And for most people, it was a practical one that in hindsight you could see, but then there were some who got this like, kind of like, hey, your purpose on the planet's a big fucking deal, and this is what it is. And we'll come back to that. Did anyone have a funny purpose? Um, funny purpose. Like, is it like, hey, your purpose to like, to be like the janitor or something. Yes, actually. Yes, actually. My stepdad was like, he was both the mechanic and the janitor of the school. My mom's purpose was to clean houses. And so their, they're sort of like custodianship or sort of stewardship was like, I guess there were some spiritual ribbons around that. It was like, you know, clean the temple, right? Clean the temple. Make sure the temple is ready for kids to learn. And it's a very high calling to make sure that the school is kept up to snuff so that your kids have an opportunity for an education. Right. And so again, you could be like, oh, that sounds really great. Right. Were there any kids with, like, disabilities whose purpose was, like, framed around that? Like, hey, your purpose is to, like, be a joy because, like, you have, like, a disability or a handgun. That's interesting. Yeah, what a big topic. I would say that disabilities were a big, like, they kind of weren't talked about. And if they were, it was more like, hey, you don't really know what this soul has come here to experience. And so.

you think they're disabled, they're just fine, let them be. And in some ways, in a good way and a bad way. I think it was like a bit of a autism and like some disabilities are sort of like, you know, that soul's purpose is to experience life through like a different lens than you're kind of capable of understanding. So kind of let it be your kid's job is to kind of just be and just hang around, which can be, which can be good. And I think, I think that message was there.

But then there's also like in the actual practices of how people treat. treated each other, there was a lot of demeaning. There was a lot of bullying. There was a lot of talking bad about, even if not to people's face. And so, like, what people would experience as, like, Duran's expectations and then, like, how you observed a lot of the people in the collective acting, especially because of the hierarchy, which we haven't gotten into, talking about life vibration and purpose, and then next is sort of the process and this sort of triangle thing. The hierarchy of how close you were to Stephen and Trina, Stephen Marlowe, were not. number two couple. Then you had Stephen and Trina's kids. And then you had like other couples that

were either had been there for a long time. But a lot of times it was like because they brought in big money. And so the status of the people would mean like if this woman says this mean thing about this girl disabled daughter, like she doesn't get called on it. But if this woman said the same thing, she's on the fucking hot seat and she's like roasted and being put on on on like black. and maybe kicked out of the collective, demurged was a very dangerous term. You're going to get demurged over that. Like, you know, demurged, merged, merged from the family, right? And you could be demurged and still live in the collective, but you're kind of outcast.

You could be demurged and, like, told you have to move away. Which, by the way, might sound weird because people go, why would a cult kick someone out? Aren't you going to lose them? But one of the things I think people don't understand about those dynamics. And there's been studies on this. It's why, like, when you talk about, like, the crips and the bloods, the reason they make you do painful shit at the start is when you do, something painful to yourself at the request of another person in a lot of ways it makes you more

loyal to them on the other side of it because why else would I endure this pain why else would I do this so there's a weird like brainwashing thing that happened by doing fucked up things you don't actually stop doubting your abuser you stop doubting yourself your brain creates rationalization all that stuff right so anyway we can talk about that so that was a thing that happened with my I won't put my mom and Dennis were demurged and we were moved and kicked out when I was like five and if anything that probably like re sort of like, you know, like cemented or in many ways, whatever, whatever a better word is for kind of like reprostrating herself at the throne, you know, to some degree. And so demurge would be a threat. And the hierarchy of how people

treated each other was often like mean girls' behavior. It was like people were just like super competitive, often drunk. By the way, there had already been enough periscuity that different men had married different women and taken different places in the totem pole, but now there's like power dynamics of how people act. And as a kid, I grew up not talking about this, but observing all of it, right? And until I'm now like here, it's like have I even more fully understood with, you know, I'm going on 11 plus years of therapy and all the work I've tried to do to kind of come to grips with my own life, let alone what I, you know, maybe kind of accidentally become a bit of like

a weird cult talking expert on some of the power dynamics here because you deal with it. I started to see like so much of the forest through the trees on this stuff. And so back to the disabled kids question is like there was not just bullying that would happen with the disabled kid, but with all types of families and all types of like ways people were treated openly by like someone if they were higher or like not openly in another dynamic and like put on the hot seat and like destroyed for it. Maybe as they should be, but I'm just pointing out like the hypocrisy of it all. Like if you were a mom of a kid who was abused by.

like Trina, not only were you not able to confront it, you were often complicit. You were often a part of it. And that's where a lot of moms, and this is one of the things I said in my book, that people from the collective have been not so happy with me about. But in my opinion, one of the main things I was trying to say is like, hey, what made the collective work was every fucking person involved. It was not just abuse handed down from the cult leaders. It was the pain inflicted on the members by the other members and that often what kept you involved was your inability to be honest with yourself

about how you treated people in a process. Right. Not how you were treated. Right. And or parents who are like, it was all Stephen and Trina or Stephen Marlowe who were frankly complicit in the process. And now again, I'm not saying they weren't victims.

There were parts of the dynamic that everyone was a child. Yeah, of Stephen and Trina were the parents of Never Neverland. Yeah. Right? And so there is some truth to that, but there's also just, in my view,

just a lot of hypocrisy in terms of why, why it went on as long as it did and why there hasn't been maybe as much of a public reckoning is because none of them want to talk about it. Because not because they don't want to talk about what Stephen and Sheena did to them. They don't want to talk about what they did or what they might have looked the other way on. And there's a big part of that. So now to the process, I think this is a huge thing. I've been saying it enough that we might as well dive in.

So the process has been a really hard thing to come to terms with because as I've become accidentally cult expertified and educated, although I didn't know about this Facebook cult. That was pretty wild. I've learned that we were taught to believe that the process was like this special thing that only our group did. And it was a thing that really made everybody unique and powerful that you could tell the level of truth to another and then also receive judgment. Sort of like you hear about different dynamics of like Scientology, where people like share

their experiences and whatever. But what I've learned is I've already casually mentioned science. A lot of different cults have a mechanism that is exactly the same as the process. They just use different terms. The group, the synodon group, which is like a well-known cult, there was a very well-done kind of like podcast docu-series that I think Robert Downey Jr. produced on the synodon cult. It's on Spotify. I'm forgetting it's called the flower, the sunshine place.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGEMD operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm just promoting another thing to look into you, but Synanon had a thing called The Game. And the game was everybody would sit around and in a group session tell each other their judgments on each other. Sometimes particular people would really get it from everybody.

And kids were raised learning how to tell their extreme truth and receive extreme truth. Everything I just described from Sinan on the Game is what we call the process. And so when I started to like get aware of this, it was very difficult to come to terms. I'm like, oh, shit, there's almost nothing I can do now to deny that this was a cult. Like for myself. Because you're looking at these things. You're like, that's definitely a cult. But we're not a cult.

And then you're like, well, we do the same. And so people have asked me in writing the book, and I think this kind of relates back to that story, they go like, when did you realize it was a cult? And I go, well, you have to understand, like, I could almost answer when I started writing the book, like five years ago. Because even if before that, I had my own list of what was cultish, what was cult like. They call it high control, high demand groups. I could say this was not okay.

I was obviously had already gone through a lot with my mom. all the things, I was much more aware of the cruelty that had been enacted in hypocrisies, but I almost wouldn't even have used that term because it's like a label that when you're a part of it, you don't even want to like acknowledge, right? And so when I started like diving in in a real way and I was already, I think, becoming more comfortable with this idea, when I started like reading stories like that or listening to that podcast, you go like, oh my God, like the process was the perfect mechanism to ensure that it was. self-regulating in terms of the hierarchy.

So what I just described about my personal opinion, why a lot of people haven't come more forth about this stuff is like really being real about what you did. And also it says something about you, right? If you're like, hey, if this is a cult, then that means I was a cult member. And then what kind of baggage does that carry on me?

Like people deny abuse oftentimes when they look at their own childhood. Oh, totally. My dad didn't beat me because if that is true, then that means my dad's a child abuser. And then that means I'm a victim of child abuse, which carries all sorts of shit. So you're like, it's actually never happened. I appreciate you saying it that way because I think it's very, when people understand it that way, there's a lot of evidence on that. People talk about how people

will stay in abusive relationships because it's what's normal. It's what's comfortable. And it's actually harder for them to acknowledge that this isn't okay. And there's also, of course, a lot of other reasons for that. It's very scary and different things. But like, yeah, when you're in an abusive environment, I've also said that as a young person born into that abusive environment, which means we were abused by the environment and some of us actually physically or mentally or sexually, there was abuse that happened. Not only did we become sort of like a part of an abusive system, but then because we were being brainwashed and sort of indoctrinated into all the benefits of the system, any parts of us that would

feel bad or shamed or have these kind of like ugly stories or not feel a good, we doubted ourselves. As I said, abused children don't stop loving their abuser. They stop loving themselves. Yeah. And it takes a long time to get enough new, like, snow dumped on the mountain of your neural pathways to realize you have more options than just the regular paths that you're snowboarding on. And that takes a lot of work and it's very scary.

And so... It's easier to believe, like, my parents are good because I love them and I believe that they're good. And that the reason they're doing this to me is because I'm... I've lost my way to God. And my parents have to be God. Because to accept the idea that they're unsafe is way more dangerous as a kid. Yeah. And kids can't really even really process that.

Exactly. Because like if you're processing that your child, sorry, that your parent isn't the person you go to for food and for safety and for all these fundamental things, like you got more shit to deal with as a four-year-old. So it's a lot easier as an abused kid to tell yourself a story of there was something wrong with you. Maybe not just now. Maybe maybe all along. Maybe you actually are fucked up. And then as you get older in this system and you're dealing with your relationship with God and you've got these secret demons of having been sexually and physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually abused. you can't even begin to touch that shit, right?

Because you're in avoidance even on an unconscious level, right? And so the process was... Yeah, take me through the scene. Yeah, so we'll do the trance in the process, right? Yeah, please. I haven't done this yet either. Take me through, like... This is turning into the best cult podcast of all time.

I'm going to look at the camera and say, if you didn't know this is the best cult podcast of all time. Like, walk me through, like, when do you find out that a process is happening? Yeah. So, oh my gosh. That's a great way to ask the question to you, because talk about a thing. You just gave me anxiety.

Every one of us who are former members of the collective will tell you we have the same thing. When a phone rings, your heart drops. I still have it today. Literally, my phone is on silent all the time because when a phone rings, it is a scary experience. We all call it, like when the hammer drop or you were being called to the hot seat.

Anyone who is from the collective, they all know who I'm talking to if they're watching this and maybe they're sick of it at this point, but they all know what I'm talking about, that like when that moment happens, your heart drops and you're being called to a process to, like, sit on the hot seat and everyone's going to, like, tear into you.

Like, it is, as a kid, you grow up in it, but, like, getting over that experience has been, you know, the worst. And it continued for a very long time, not always in a process, but the license that, like, the ministers had to call you and just assure you. I share one of the earliest ones I have, which is Stephen Camp calls me, me and said you're off the chess team in the book. Like that by itself was like a moment of like,

talk about reinforcing power where like the, you know, the gods that be could like just ripeth, giveth and taketh away on a level that was like your entire spiritual self-worth and now to a process. Here's how it would come together and what the process was for us. It was. Yeah. So you're sitting on the couch. You're sitting on the couch. You're sitting on the couch or in the living room. So, okay, I was jumping, I was jumping to a process. So let's say you go to a process. where is it so a community process would would either happen sometimes the transfer room on a rare case would be repurposed for it like we would actually have the light on and you would sort of change the chairs into like a bit of a circle and people would come in and a process would go down i'll talk about the dynamics of the process and who leads in a second there are many other times where like the school because the school had like big rooms the the the Shelby school the private school would be like you know there's a process in the annex building and so the annexing building, which was generally like the science lab, the computer lab, everybody would turn the chairs in, regardless of whether it was like the transfer room, the school, or sometimes just one of the minister's

house was probably the most actually common and convenient now that I think about it, because the minister's house is where a minister was. And a process was more often than not led by one of the ministers, which was four people. Trina, Stephen, my dad, Steve Wrench, who I didn't know as my dad, whatever, but my Steve Wrench and Marlowe. Those were usually the main four people. who led a process. Now, what time of day would they be? It could be any time a day. And any time? And what notice would you have that a process was happening? Sometimes it would be scheduled like, hey, we're going to have a process about this particular issue. Like Danny and Dallas, my stepbrother, are not getting along and we're going to have a process

after the community trance at Stephen Marlowe's house. Danny and Debbie and Dennis, you're going to be there. Dallas, Stephen Marlow are going to be there and Stephen and Trina are going to be there. And we're going to talk about their relationship. That was an actual process that happened. That's why it was specific. And there are times where, like, you would be sort of told a few days in advance that we were going to try to resolve this issue. It wasn't always under the worst of, we're going to have a process. It was like, hey, you know what, we're not getting anywhere in this relationship. Let's get together. And so there were times where it could be softly organized, even if it ended badly. I'm just kind of clarifying that very much like any human dynamic, there was nuance to how it

would come together. But a minister's house was very common because you would want to have them oversee it. A minister always oversaw it. And so, Let's say you go to a process, I'll move to like more of a general one, like where it was a process with all the kids, which is where it could be like Lord of the Flies. And these are some of the things that make me, and probably many of my fellow peers who were born in that generation just make you sad in terms of like the dynamic we were raised in and how we were told to treat each other and how we engaged in that behavior. So let's say we're meeting at Lane and Nicole's. They are the, Lane is one of the sons of Trina and Stephen, and like their house is hosting this process. Let's say my dad is the minister,

and there's a bunch of kids within a few years of each other having like a kid process. When we were young, sometimes they would call it a what's up. We're having a what's up, which was like a rebranded, more friendly term for kids to process. Hey, everybody, we're going to have a what's up today. In hindsight, it wouldn't matter because it would still get ugly. And it's the same exact environment of a process,

which is often everyone comes together, sits down, And there were two different types. Sometimes there was like an issue coming in. Somebody had called the process. They had called the meeting together. And what was nerve-wracking and anxiety-inducing is in some ways it was really awful when there was already a process that had gotten together and you're getting a call to get over there now. You're on the hot seat. So that was very hard.

And that's like the phone call anxiety. But there's also anxiety when you're entering a process and you don't know who's called it and you don't know what's up. So you're showing up without even knowing what's happening. So you're showing up, knowing that there's a process, and you don't even know who's about to be on the hot seat. But you know you have to be there. You know you got to be there, right? And what's crazy is that's really revealing to what a traumatized abuse brain will do is because if you're in that mindset, you are being called into a process with 20 other kids and a couple ministers and you know there's something intense. What would your brain be doing before the process started?

Drastic, catastrophic thinking of every terrible thing you've ever done. And you would eventually start building a list on other people in the room because you're, because you're, you're not. your best defense was a good offense. Right. I did this because you did this. Yeah, or you don't know who's calling the process, so you're like, whatever's going to happen here is this. But even if I'm getting in trouble with Dallas,

I've got a bunch of judgments on Paul that I'm going to express. And so kids end up doing these like mental spiritual gymnastics because they're unsafe. They need to like have a good standing in the collective. They're trying to like juggle this dynamic where no one wants to be on the hot seat. And so the fastest way to get off the hot seat. Put someone else in. to get someone else in it, right? And that's like something that has been very hard to come to terms

with is like that we were all not just subject to this idea of like extreme judgment, which was, is very hard, especially for young people, but also for adults. We haven't talked about an adult process yet. We're going to get into how alcohol and how you ever heard of the term getting glassed. Getting glasses when someone throws a glass in your face. Yeah. People would get glassed in like these adult processes. So there's like, intense. alcohol-driven violent processes. Like, as a kid, I saw other grown men beat the shit out of other grown men, like, in some of these environments.

And there were also other types of things that went down. And so when I say this stuff now, people go, wow, it took this guy a long time to think this was called, right? But, again, it was all justified in under the auspices, and I will be honest that, like, without even going into the details, I'm pretty direct about this in the book about my dad and Stephen Camp. but often like the men who were beating up the other men were like the higher ones on the hierarchy because they're the ones who can like get away with it.

Yeah. Right. Or acting in some way like really aggressive and belligerent, right? And so that wasn't always the case, but it did happen. And so the adult process could be crazy. But even as a kid, you're being put in this environment where it's Lord of the Flies. And even if there was something about you that someone was righteously angry about, what if you were a bully on the playground that day? or whatever it was that you did that you got in trouble for,

it takes a lot to be in that environment and just like get, you know, literally get stoned, right? It gets stoned verbally. Make it concrete. Like, what's an example of, okay, let's say bullying, you can make one up or something that actually happened. But like, you show up as a kid or even as an adult, you show up at the process and they just say, hey, sit.

Yeah, 100% what would happen? Literally that. Just like that. And you sit down and then someone leads it? Is it like spiritual? Is there like a... There's no like, there's no organized. way that they dive in. It's just like, hey, Danny, sit down, you know, Nikki and Alex have something

they want to say to you. And then they would just go, right? And for some people, it was like, some people were better at expressing. Some people were better at kind of playing that part of the game to use the synodon reference. They were better at performing in the process. There were other kids that really struggled vocally to like share naturally. Like all kids are different, right? It'd be really, one of the hardest things at times would be like when someone else was given the floor against someone on the hot seat and they couldn't get it out and then they would like get in trouble from like the minister now and now the hot seat's on them right we gathered all these people exactly it's like you're in a position where if you're unable to express yourself

that's almost worse than being on the hot seat right so i mean there were to give you specific examples i mean we all bullied each other there were different times where like one of the times i got in big trouble like wasn't in the book is like i changed who was invited to my birthday for the spend the night at the last minute. My mom said I could have a few, like three or four. And the hierarchy is like I tried to invite like the higher up kids on the totem pole. But then one of my friends was like, hey, if you invite me, because everyone knows it's going to be chocolate cake there, I'll give you this like thing. And so I kicked someone else out. And I'm only changing names now because I want to be kind of them. But I go in and out of that stuff because of the legal advice I was given,

but also just to be kind to like, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to dive too much into that. but I kicked this kid out of like my birthday slumber party purely because this other kid gave me something, right? Yeah. So you could say that's like a shitty thing to do for like a seven, eight year old. You could also say like kids are being kids. You could also say it was fucked up that my mom put us in that dynamic, right? You shouldn't totally do that.

And especially in a collective that is so driven by hierarchy and power, well, I got called to a process and got big, big trouble for this. And one of the things on me, one of my, one of the things about Danny's process. So I've used the word, let me, let me clarify how process was used. because every cult has like their own like terminology, language, right? So you could be in a process, which was the gathering. You could be processed. That's the act of you being kind of like interrogated or you're on the hot seat.

You can have a process, meaning your ongoing process is you're struggling with being in competition. You're struggling with jealousy. You're struggling with this. So you could have almost like an adjective label of what your process was. And so one of the things about my process is that Danny was competitive and ambitious. And so, which was an interesting label because with time, it was also something I learned that I like inherited from everyone's label about my mom. When my dad left my mom,

suddenly their whole marriage was like this accusation that my mom had married him for his money to begin with. She was always a gold digger. She was always this. And it's funny. Like my mom and I like literally like took that psychic bullshit like for years and it was awful. But my mom was like. And so I was labeled as the son of a gold digger. digger literally and i was the bastard child of steve wrench which i didn't even know until later and

that took its own weird secret but then they look at this situation where they're like oh you want invited a kid just so you could get something exactly that's evidence of your mother's sin that you inherited your mom you were raised this way fucking dany like you act like you should have everything like you're ambitious and what's amazing is like kids could talk to each other like this because they had been given like the weapons of of of the teaching and with the parents of the kid that you The parents would also pile on. Like there was almost no boundaries of other people's parents disciplining a kid who wasn't theirs. Almost none.

Yeah, because there were physical boundaries, but then there were some that were encouraged. I mean, my dad was in an awful spot, I say now with compassion, because he was literally labeled as the enforcer. All the single women who had children whose husbands had either married other women in the collective or had run away in the night. Because one of the things would happen is the men would be able to leave the collective. They would run away in the night. My stepdad, Dennis, literally left my mom, like, in the night. She found out he was gone by opening his dresser drawers. Wow.

All this shit was gone. So, like, there were single women who, like, couldn't deal with some of their kids. And so Stephen Camp made my dad the enforcer. And my dad would say this is the thing that is the worst sin he's ever done. And it should be because he was abusive to other people's children. My dad was a prick. And what he did is, like, for some people, will be seen as unforgivable. My dad would also say that he has a lot of his own abuse, a lot of his own

and he was weaponized by Stephen Camp and he'll never live it down and never forget it. Both things are true, right? And so there were times where there was physical abuse by people who weren't the biological parents. Not that it's okay to abuse your, but you know what I mean? Like I'm just explaining the full rated are there. And so, yeah, so processes with kids, I don't think would get physical. Like, not that I remember.

I think as we started getting older and as we started drinking, there were times where processes would have like some pushing and shoving. Can you take me to like a violent adult process? Yeah. I think I share this one in the book. I'll share it again. That there was a there was a process where I saw one guy like literally throw another one off a chair, rip their shirt off and kick them into the snow.

And there were times when I, you know, witnessed someone getting glassed, you know, some like a glass being thrown in someone's face. Is it fully a glass to their head? Or is it pouring water? No, but it was, it's kind of like a, it's not like staying there, motherfucker, and I'm going to hit you with a glass. I don't know, that would be, you know, whatever.

But like, it's kind of like like that. Wow. Throwing it in like a shoved sort of way, right? And that was a thing that it became a really fucked up thing because it's like, your performance in a process,

while not a performance, I'm using that term to kind of make my point, was often celebrated the next day. Right? So it's like, yeah, did you see Danny last night? Well, he really let he really let this person have it. Right. The more emotional, more rage you were. And so it doesn't mean everyone's expression was always faked. I think there were times, and I'm definitely painting all the bad things as I should, and there were really a lot of then fallout process dynamics where people's secrets and judgments had come out and now they're going to be used against them,

i.e. like the Scientology model, right? So it was like violent settings of uninhibited judgment under the auspices of everyone should tell the truth. There are no secrets in God. I guess with the other two things, I made it more of an effort to explain the positive spiritual justification. So process is a little harder to justify.

Positive spiritual justification for like vibration, either way, before it gets weaponized. Positive spiritual justification of purpose before it's weaponized. The positive spiritual justification for the process is like, hey, the truth shall set you free. There are no secrets in God. Secrets are not in this teaching. Ultimately, aren't we all going back to the single source anyway? So what do you have to be afraid of?

Yeah. If we're all the same consciousness. Well, and you see how that can be weaponized. So what are you afraid of? The fact that you keep your judgments or this, you know, you're worried about talking about how you masturbated, like, this is a thing you should be putting on the table. Because if you if you don't put it on the table, you're forgetting that you're God. Don't you know that you're God? You have nothing to be ashamed of. And also, like, how else are you going to work through it if you don't take these secrets out of the closet. So now a young man takes the risk of talking about his masturbation, even if it was dealt with in a healthy way, which we'll say is one out of 10 times, there were times when a process could end well, or in my opinion, and I think anybody who's listening

from the collective who says they never had a positive process is probably living a little bit more in the telling themselves a story because they don't want to deal with either what they did or their own baby with the bathwater. I just don't think that's true. I think there were some times where even without a trained psychologist, there was like, there were some rare times. where like people felt supported by things they were going through or they would say this actually did help me to be in a vulnerable environment with people who loved me. The problem is even if seven of the 10 in the room check the box of loving you a couple of the ones who didn't and here we're back to the fallout of the process, now this kid's masturbation that he's shared is being used against him and he's

perverted. Yeah. Now he's afraid to talk about it again and I thought we were all God. Also like, you know, now the young women hear about it. So now he's being sex shamed openly among a among the young women that he's a perverted young man. And then all of his behavior, even if it's unrelated, is now connected to it. It's like, oh, you were flirting with this girl. Because that's like a personal story that I have. Right now there's like young women. I mean, I would say that without getting into specifics that are not my story to tell,

there is no world where I don't feel that young women had it harder than any of the young men. I think that a combination of the expectation of what they were supposed to grow. into who they were supposed to become for their for their future like vibration the sex shaming and the way that they were treated in many ways there was like environments where young women were forced to have sex even if there wasn't someone in the bedroom they were forced by the environment to have sex there the way that young women were treated is like um you know it's worse than anything as a guy who was abducted and taken away from his mom and was also abused and I just I can't get around that stuff and it's really, really, it's really, really sad and gross and hard.

So, so yeah, and a lot of that stuff might come out in a process in terms of what someone's dealing with. And again, even if it went okay, which was on the rare side, but there were some, not everybody was clean in terms of that actually belonged to the people in the room or this is not meant to be used against this person. It would all be used against people. And their process, their case, competition, this person's perverted, this person's that. would then be a label that followed them everywhere, right? And probably the only way to get people to stop talking about your label is to make someone else's label more important.

And so, like, there were times that I, you know, impossible to share all these stories, of course, but there were times when like, even in like my young marriage with Shawna, where it's like aspects of our relationship, people were encouraged to talk about their sex life, share intimate details, like talk about these things that you're struggling with. And then it's like, now the next day is like, Shawna and Danny's sex life is like hot gossip in the in the in the fucking

collective and that's like a thing that actually happened right can anyone go to anyone else's process no there were definitely like okay it's actually two things there was definitely a policy in the collective of always go where angels fear to tread there is no such thing as a closed door you can enter any time but there were also processes that were just not open to everyone because of the intensity of the topic right and again like well we'll probably circle back here to my story at some point I think that as the collective fell apart, as like, you know, some of the shit that started to hit the fan with people who were having their marriages fall apart, like sexual shit that was being shared

and power dynamics there and basically bad things that happened in the collective. Like, you started getting more closed door processes, even though everyone knew what was going on. And then the resolution would also come closed door, which didn't make sense except anything other than the hierarchy and the money dynamic, which made certain hypocrisies impossible to look past. and dancing around the elephant in the room a little bit, it's like when it would be like if someone who was a kid of someone with money did something unforgivable

and yet it was resolved without the community having a proper say. Right. Right. Those types of things would happen. And so, yeah, and none of the things that we just spent the last 30 minutes talking about were really in my book, right? This is really the collective stuff that, you know, my book has currently been purchased for a movie. I said no to a documentary,

even though that actually came very quickly when my story came out. Not that it matters, along with people who are willing to write checks for that. But I said no to that because for me, that actually would have defeated a lot of the purposes of what I was trying to do with my book, which was to tell an honest, vulnerable, authentic story of not just what I had been through, but frankly, what I had done to others and what I've learned about this whole mess. I was not here to, like, tell people's stories who weren't my own and or, like, close my eyes with a machine going to blame. be like all archives are on the table. That's not, I don't feel like that's my place, and I don't feel like that's what I'm trying

to do. And frankly, I don't think the world needs more scandalous shit. I think the world needs more stories of what have we done now to learn from this? How can we transform our pain into something special? Let's tell more stories of alchemy. The obstacle is the way. How do we overcome shit? That's what I'm here, hopefully, what I want to do.

But I will say that probably they'll, they will continue to be more stories coming out. I think that, you know, my book. is not the closing of a chapter. It's probably the beginning of a new one. And I said no to a documentary because I think that all of these things would have had to be on the table and that's not really my place.

And it's not really what I want to do. So I think we can... Maybe that's a big ribbon to kind of leave some of this stuff out without getting too deep into it. Not that we can't continue to go in and out of the cult stuff. And we haven't even really talked about

what happened with me. And we dropped a bomb at the beginning of the episode being abducted, taken from your mom. But anyway, so... If that's okay, I don't want to go too much into other stories that aren't my own and kind of right on that line. Of course. As far as the process goes, though, did the hierarchy protect anyone?

For sure. Was Trina ever processed? See, that's part of the problem is that like, you heard stories as a kid that in the early days of the collective, it was a little bit more everyone's shit was on the table. I really grew up in an environment where like Trina was untouchable. And frankly, like, she suffered from it because as she became, I would argue the worst versions of herself. She had created an environment, right?

There's no chance. You draw enough how dare you, and you end up in a prison of your own kind of making where no one's allowed to talk to you. And then you wonder why you're, you know, an isolated narcissist alcoholic, right? And she got off on the fact that she was a deity, right? And she was, whether trans was ever real or not, she was not a human being who was acting by her own teaching. Yeah. And that was really sad to watch. It was sad to see what happened to her family.

it was sad to see everything that went down as the collective kind of imploded on itself. But there were definitely hierarchy dynamics in the process of like... Like was your dad ever processed? My dad could be processed by Stephen and Trina and by Marlow. So that's sort of how the hierarchy works.

Yeah, exactly. So people at the bottom of the totem pole, they were getting it from everyone. Yeah. And then if you were like second or third, you were just getting it from above you. 100%. And again, there's probably some vague exceptions

to the rule where there's a little bit of gray, but basically yes, that was it. Is that the hierarchy completely controlled that. And the rare time someone would take their life in their hands and give Steve Wrench a judgment, they would usually live to regret it. Yeah. You know, because that's kind of thing that would backfire. Right. You can technically do it if you want to because he's like the bylaws of the community, but I'm not going to forget.

100% you could technically do it. One of the most infamous recordings I came into contact with was an early process where someone basically tried to give Stephen Camp a judgment. and oh my gosh like the recording literally goes from not only him like pulling rank and what happened next but like then you hear like shuffles and physical violence it's like the power dynamic of that

was like alpha gorilla don't fuck with the silverback kind of thing and again like I certainly was not in every process but those types of things with time along with some of the other undeniable you would go oh that makes you go because I've been asked another question

you haven't asked yet but I'm going to ask it because I think I think viewers want it is they go, well, do you think Trina and Stephen always meant to start a cult or do you think it happens accidentally? Which is a bit of an existential question. Is there somebody who actually was trying to do good and power, absolute power corrupts absolutely as they gain it. It corrupts them. And ultimately it's a cult or was their intentionality, was their motivation and was there

sort of an understanding of what it would take to make a group like that work? I think I have leaned much more the former overall that I think there was some good, even if they were trying to do good, bad things happen. And then even when they eventually might have been doing bad things, like, who knows? I think as I've gotten more perspective and I've considered more, I'll call them in the undeniable list, when you start writing a book and you think you have your own list of what the baby is

and what the bathwater is and you start to do the honest review and you go, oh, like, well, fuck. Maybe that was just undeniable. Maybe that was kind of always part of the thing. And that's been really hard to swallow because when we get back to my life, it's like in many ways before that perspective was there, like, you know, I loved them and I was put on a path that I thought was good for me, you know, until my own life started falling apart. And so you really come to terms with, oh, like, there was motivation and there was like, there was not good things there maybe from the beginning. Hey, guys, we're going to take a break really quick because I want to tell you about

one of the sponsors of this show. And that's perplexity. Every AI expert seems to recommend a different AI tool. And every time I start a project, I'm asking myself, I'm like, do I use this one for this or should I use another? Like, one is better at research, a different, you know, LLM or another AI is better at like writing. Another one's better at coding or like finding flights. And then I need something that can turn all those answers into like actual information that I can really digest. And before long, I'm like going through five different tools trying to figure out how to do something. And that's why I'm so excited about perplexity computer. Instead of locking you into one model, perplexity computer orchestrates the leading AI models and automatically

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explain what I need done and then let computer handle the tools and I can focus on being creative. So for a limited time, our listeners can try perplex you computer for free. All you got to do is head to pplx.lx.a.i. slash camp. That is ppllx.lx.a.m. and try computer today. Most AI tools are still answering questions, but perplexity computer is completing full projects. Now, let's get back to the show. Yeah. I always assume, like, having studied Colts, like, just a little bit, it's a little bit of like an Oppenheimer situation, where it's like, I have something that I think is really valuable that I want to share with people, and I'm going to make a system that I think is the best. And then as time goes on and the system evolves, it then gets used to maintain itself and destroy people

in the way. So like, Oppenheimer's like, dude, I'm doing science, I'm developing this technology. It's going to help people, da-da, like whatever that internal motivation is, I'm going to protect America and whatever. And then all of a sudden he creates a nuclear bomb that, you know, holds untold damage and causes this new paradigm. And it's like, all right, well, there's good intention. You sort of invent something that then goes sideways. And at that point, you kind of got to, like, deal with it. That's kind of my assumption coming from the outside. Yeah. I agree. And I think as someone who grew up in it, though where it gets hard and fucked up to kind of reconcile that is that, where does Duran fit and all that?

Where does spirit fit and all that? Because ultimately that leads back to your like feelings about as someone who, anyone who's been watching the podcast now heard me say, like I do believe there's a very good chance that consciousness is fundamental and that we don't understand. We think therefore we are. And awareness, like I said, the undeniable miracle of how we got here,

before you talk about man-made meaning of why and storytelling. Like I think there's a lot of me that would go. I think there's like the potential of some really consistent, highly, like, highly useful truths that are shared across a lot of different messaging on consciousness and how we're trying to evolve and be the best versions of ourselves and the golden rule. And a lot of that was in some of the lacings that I was raised in. And so as I've like grown as like a dad and a father and educated myself on more spiritual doctrine. And I've now I've read a lot.

You and I talk about last night, I've kind of been a bit of a spiritual curious philosophizer in my own way to try to maybe answer some of these things for myself. And with that, I've come to terms with my own view that trance was real for me at times. There was things that happened that were spiritually powerful and there were consistent messages of truth. And yet here's a spirit who couldn't even get a handle on his own like narcissistic. alcoholic medium and allowed for this type of environment to exist where undeniable like hardship went down and spirit would say and at times would sort of break their own fourth wall of like there were times when durand would say I'm not responsible for how you people are treating each other and there are times where like that message would go they're talking

specifically in general about this and then I step back and go maybe there really is something to like free will can't be broken because if you're here to learn lessons and evolve spiritually, it's actually not possible to intervene. The same superficial reason he couldn't answer why you should take the fucking job or not. Right. So I give him like this like, oh, am I justifying? Am I justifying something that I can't make sense of? Or is there truth to that?

I don't know. But it's broken me. Yeah. It's broken my own heart. It's broken my own life. It almost broke me, you know, in this lifetime as far as what would happen to me before before the success story of Chess.com and dealing with Hans Neiman and Magnus, you know what I mean?

But that's been a very hard one to just make sense of to just put on the table. It's like, I don't know. And it's really difficult for me to understand any God who would look at the universe with the current level of hardship. But there's also no world where I even get behind the fact that God exists without the idea of karma. Because to me, we can't make sense of a singular lifetime existence because here you and I are where there's a kid being murdered in Ukraine.

I already addressed this, right? So if there's any existential idea, I have to actually lean. We are responsible for what we do to each other and we will learn as we evolve more than I could ever believe there's a singular deity sitting up there with a fucking beard on a chair and saying, you guys are idiots. I don't describe that anyway. I don't believe in the idea of a God in a singular lifetime existence. I can't get behind it scientifically. I can't get behind it spiritually. The scales don't fucking balance.

So that's where I sit on that. And so it kind of leads me back to going. Like, I don't know, man. I don't know how to make sense of some of this stuff other than there were some things that I thought were really helpful and I carry with me today as practices. And I try to be the best version of myself I can, but also undeniable cruelty and undeniable evidence that even if spirit was real, I've seen spirituality weaponized. And even if community is needed, I know what a cult is. And this was a cult.

Yeah. And even if there were truths to the teachings, the teachers fucked it up. And so I've been able to sit in the middle. I accidentally just did the six, seven. I'm sitting here in the middle of nuance. And I think that's where I've landed as a man, which I think is actually good, because I think it's important for us to be able to hold opposing truths. But I can't reconcile everything from this church.

I can't reconcile the collective. That's why the book was my story. I'm not here to tell everyone else's. And this is the world that you're born into. And now people, I think, are aware of sort of how it got weaponized and how, you know, like, obviously the bad parts, but as well as like, well, I see how they kind of got there and how, you know, it evolved into this sort of decrepit thing. But as a six-year-old kid, you're living there, you're being raised by your mom. Who doesn't know who his dad is? Which is such an interesting line in the book where your dad goes off and marries the cold leader's daughter.

And you're living, you know, a couple blocks away from this guy who's your biological father, but you just know him at. as Stephen Wrench, right? And you are under a different last name. And you're being raised by your mom and your stepdad and you're like, well, that's another guy. He's the enforcer. Literally, that's what I, actually his nickname in the collective was Dr. Death.

Wow. That was my dad's nickname. But now you're saying your dad at the time when you're just a little kid, that's the, that's a scary guy. Yeah. Without realizing like, it's like almost like Luke Skywalker shit,

where it's like, dude, that's my dad. My dad's the bad guy. Right? Like he's the scary guy that all the kids are afraid of. Yeah. So then at this point, you know, you watch this film searching for Bobby Fisher. You get passionate about chess and then slowly or perhaps quickly that becomes your purpose. So take me to that part where all of a sudden chess is integrated into your life and becomes the single reason you exist. Yeah.

So I watched the movie searching for Bobby Fisher. I'm obsessed with chess. important to understand the unique dynamics. I always reference sort of Malcolm Gladwell's outliers, sometimes or in the Freakonomics lane. A lot of times there are unique things that happen when you look at somebody who, you know, got really good at or went on to do something great,

which in my lane, I guess you could say I did, especially for a while as a chess kid. I got really good, really fast. How did that happen, right? There were three things that summer. The movie came out. the world chess championship between Vishwanath on anon and Gary Kasparov was taking place in New York at the World Trade Center. This was the first time that the World Chess Championship had been in the West, or that the West had even given a shit since like Bobby Fisher in the 70s.

So Western media is paying attention, which means it's on the news again. And Stephen Camp is back into it because he was part of the generation who got into it in the 70s like everyone else with Fisher. And then like a lot of people fell out of it. There was a boom with Bobby Fisher, the only American to ever become world champion, even to this day. And then there was a fallout, but now Stephen Camp is back into it. And the collective was under attack from like local sort of rednecks who were like, I was run off the road by rednecks in a truck. They were like fucking freaks. And like, and like they were like threatening kids.

One of them showed up at the schoolgrounds with a gun. There was like this attack on the cult, which of course only embozoned all of us to be, embole. all of us to be like, it's not a cult, right? As we said, Twist ending, it was a cult, but it was not the cult that they were saying we were. And so all the kids were told they have to stay inside. And I think that's interesting because, again, now people go, oh, so I'm like this kid who learns this game. Cult leaders obsessed with chess again. And I get really good, really fast. And he hears through the grapevine that me and Dallas, my stepbrother, at this point, I was told who my dad was, partly because of the dynamic I foreshadowed earlier. Dallas and I had a lot of

conflict around our relationship because Dallas knew at a young age that Steve Wrench was not his father, but was Danny's father. So there were times literally when Dallas would like yell at me on the playground, he's not your father, he's mine. And I would be like, what the fuck are you talking about? You had no idea. Literally had no idea, right? That's how crazy some of the stuff was because Dallas was the son of the minister. So he was like way up on the totem pole. He had information about people's processes about stuff. So that is like its own huge ball of wax that has been, you know, very hard for Dallas to make sense of his life, which I won't get into, but like, that was our relationship. So I'm now told that, um, that, uh, that Steve's my father.

Does your brain explode? Totally explode. And, and it was also because Dallas's younger sister, Bean said she had a crush on me. That's what I share in the book. There, a lot of my relationship with Dallas was in the original transcript and it was cut. And partly because, again, just I'm sharing all the things and people are interesting or not, this is interesting about what it is to write a book. There were other aspects. of my own abuse. There were other aspects of my relationship with my mom that we also didn't go into. There were a big, another storyline that was big when we had 230,000 words, dude. Just, you know, 230,000 words is like a Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yeah. It's too many words, right? And my book,

as published, was like 130, I think 125. So there were some big decisions made on that. Hard, ultimately, to like cut things, but not because I wasn't prepared and won't be talking about them, but because ultimately we did sort of commit to what made the most impactful sense. I feel good about what we wrote. But my relationship with Dallas was a big part of that, not just being my sister having a crush on me, who I didn't know was my sister, talk about incest. I'm like liking this girl and she likes me and we're brother and sister. Yeah. This is talking about, just, Luke and Leah, holy shit. So I'm saying. I never even realized that. It's Star Wars. That is a Star Wars story. Oh my God. So I've got my own like mini Star Wars story going on here. Told my dad is my dad. Now I'm playing chess and I'm

getting really good. Dallas and I were sort of like a lot of the tension was a little more eased because once I knew that he was my dad, Dallas and I did this big kind of spiritual dance where I literally told Dallas that he could have my dad spiritually. It was like a practice they made us do. So I like gave my dad to Dallas spiritually. And in return, like we kind of eased the tension. So now he and I are both into chess. We are getting pretty good. Stephen Camp is calling us into his house and we very quickly over the next few years are the core people who start the Shelby School Chess team and the Shelby School Chess team, anyone can Google it. Like we went on to win, like, we dominated. This became probably the most successful scholastic team in like American

chess history. Winning state championships wasn't like a thing. It was winning national championships. It was winning individual national championships. I went from learning the game to in two years, I was an all-American. I was like the highest rated 11-year-old and then 12-year-old. I was on my way to being, I was like an American chess prodigy. I became one of the best players in the country. And which is just like a natural, God-given talent that you're good at the game, but also every single day. You're playing chess for hours and hours. I would actually argue it's probably more the latter, not because I don't think that, I think talent does exist, but like I do in my existential dance on spirituality, I'm not going to pretend. I don't know, I don't really know how that works

because people have go like, how did you get really good, Danny? Because all the other kids also had the same environment, but I definitely excelled. So I think there's no denying that whatever that looks like from a, I had the genetic makeup of someone who would be very good at something like this, who knows, whatever you want to believe about somebody. He's a freak athlete, but also he trains a lot. Yeah, but I trained a lot, got really good, became the best player on the team. And then around the age of 12 is where we're getting back to the story of, of how did I get abducted and like what happened? Well, when I became the prodigy that I was, and, Stephen Camp was very involved in my life at that point.

I had gone from not really knowing the man, literally being on the bottom of the totem pole with my mother, my scarlet lettered mother, to now like, I'm like Stephen Camp's favorite kid in the collective. Maybe I'm not being called the golden boy yet. I would share in the book that they would like call me the golden boy behind my back. Like not in a good way. It was like I had been like made special by Stephen Camp and was resented.

And then there was a lot of dynamics that were hard the other way. Right. But you also have a class transformation. Like that happened in multiple. ways where you're with your mother who is sort of dismissed within the cult or within the community and you're very low and then all of a sudden it's revealed that your dad is number two so all of a sudden that elevates you because you're like technically from the bloodline of the number two in command yep and then on top of that the guy that's literally leading the cult is now

like hey you're going to be our golden goose and all of a sudden you just rise all the ranks now can you explain what is the incentive for camp and the rest of the collective to have you as a great chess player. Like, how does that align with a cult? Yeah, so it's funny because in hindsight, the whole timeline was 100% connected, which is that in many ways, how did I get into chess?

Well, it was during a summer where we were being attacked for being a cult, which is ironic and or purpose or coincidence, and that the fact that I got really good at chess became one of the most important tools or weapons in Stephen Camp's tool bag to prove to the world that we weren't a cult. Or maybe better said, if we were a cult,

maybe the rest of the world should do what we're doing. Because basically the Shelby School chess team and Danny, but before we get to like Danny's golden boy and then, you know, the hardship that came with being taken away from my mom for him to like really push me, the whole Shelby School team was like made special. We were allowed to travel. We got haircuts above other kids. We got new shoes and new clothes.

We, you know, we got to eat fast food. We talked about how that was like, you know, that was like the cream of the crop, right, going to McDonald's. And like, there was this, there was a, whole paradigm shift. The Shelby School chess team became the most important thing to Stephen and Trina

because of this opportunity to prove to the world that we weren't a cult. And not only we're not occult, we are actually creating the most advanced academic children in the world. And so we were accused of cheating

and not like the type of cheating we'll get into with Hans and Magnus that I deal with now, not AI. This is like, they must be recruiting across boundary lines. How does a school go from zero to like the best fucking chess school in the country?

We were accused. And again, it was weird because there were no boundary lines. there were, in fact, the truth was stranger than fiction. It was a cult where we were doing school, chess school, for hours and hours every day. And so we had, we got really good because we had nothing else to do. And we had a cult leader who had infinite power and influence. And at the time, a bunch of parents who were emboldened to his mission.

Why? Because they didn't like being attacked and called a cult either. And any one of their kids that was on the school team, you know how special those parents felt? So it was like, if you want to talk about, Before we talk about the bad dynamics, if you want to talk about what human beings are capable of when they all believe in the same mission, just look at the Shelby School chess team and the use case that came out of Tono Village, Arizona, because in two years, with a bunch of parents who believed in it, a bunch of kids who worked their ass off and someone who had like a vision, we became the most dominant chess team in the history of the United States on a scholastic level. Like, that's fucking crazy, right? And so, of course they thought we were cheating.

But again, the truth was stranger than fiction. We were all just cold kids. I went, as I said, from zero to 2000, which is a huge benchmark. It's expert level on your way to master. But to do that in like less than two years was pretty much unprecedented. So now I'm 12. And I'm like the apple of Stephen Camps Eye. I'm the star of the Shelby School chess team.

There's been up and downs that have happened where I've experienced, you know, we've talked a lot about collective, the process, abuse. I was kicked in and out of the chess team anytime I had a bad tournament by camp. So we've kind of gone over the ugly. so I'm not going to let my brain go into that. But now on the, on the, not good, but on where this was headed was like, I'm being treated special. But now when I have bad tournaments, every time I have a bad tournament, back to what are the, the big three of the spiritual thing, I'm a spiritual being with a purpose. That means my purpose.

Okay, we have, okay, it wasn't ordained yet. I shouldn't skip past that. The idea that the idea that I could use chess to help the collective change its reputation and prove to the world was like a big deal. And so at some point in a trance, I was told by Duran kind of out of the blue. And it was like it didn't feel good. It was almost like a discipline. It was like he was going to the room. He's like, and Danny, you will accept that your purpose is chess.

Your purpose is chess. You're here to become the world chess champion. And like, you know, you need to like work hard and earn your gift. A big phrase in the teaching was you get the gift and then you earn it. So you've been given a gift of your. purpose, that gift came with you in your embodiment. Now it's time for you to earn it, motherfucker. Like, that was the discipline. It's like, here's your gift. Now earn it. Get to work, right? Not a bad phrase, but also like, you know, pretty tough. In the context of it. And so I was like,

given my purpose, talk about leaving the trance move, getting your shoes on. Everyone's like, yeah, like, good job, Danny and kind of thing. And it was, as I described it, like, it was kind of like a big deal for a young person to be told so directly, this is what you're going to do. Because it put everything else in question. Like at this point, school became optional. Yeah. At this, I mean, why wouldn't it? Because we're here to do like a much bigger spiritual purpose than all the bullshit rules of humanity. And so now as I'm playing and performing and doing well, I'm making my way toward master into this. Now I'm in seventh grade. So I'm 12, 13.

No, no. Yeah, I'm 12 going on 13. I'm in sixth grade going on seventh grade. I won the elementary national championship. I write about that in the book, which is the, you know, You know, that's winning the nationals, right? That summer, I had a couple bad tournaments. And at this point, every time I have a bad tournament, it's not just a bad chess tournament or the fact that I am slowing down on this goal to become the youngest master in Arizona history, a big goal that Camp had set. But also, like, if this is my spiritual purpose and I'm not performing on the Earthplane,

what's wrong with the Earthplane? Because if Stephen Camp really believes in this and I should be this good, it's time to change the airplane dynamics to support this, right? And so a big part of this was like my biological relationship with my mom immediately came into question, which is, hey, maybe she's the problem. Maybe she's not spiritual enough. Maybe she's not capable of being the mother of someone with such a heavy task. Maybe she's not capable of supporting you.

And these were both directly said to me by camp and then in other ways subconsciously sort of said. And then on my mom's side, this is where she gets really dark, is I would learn many years later as I would reconnect with my mom and heal and understand this is like she was being processed the other way which is like one would you really want to be known as the person who stopped this kid from changing the world also is the fact that you're obsessed with him because he's steve wrench's kid is it just because you're still in love with steve oh wait a second does dennis know you're still in love with steve your current husband i wonder how he would feel

if like your sort of perverse relationship with danny who you've kind of made your husband because you can't be with your husband. You're now married to your, to your oldest son. These are things actually said. We were made to feel super perverse about our relationship. So you see this flywheel I'm doing, right? And so it's like now, are you really going to stand in the way because it also could be fucking up your marriage. Oh, by the way, don't you and Dennis have some issues going on? Maybe this is the issue. So when all these things were going down and I know people will read the book and we're not here to promote the book, we're here to tell a story, but I will just say there's no way I can do this story justice. I'm saying that to say, like, the book has a lot of detail because it's just hard.

But it leads to this like incredibly awful experience where Stephen Camp decided that I was not going to be living with my mom and dad anymore. My mom and stepdad Dennis. They weren't spiritually fit to do this. And my mom was on board with the idea because I was the one ruining her marriage. So we sit down and have this conversation where I basically tell her like the line that he had given me, which is who is my mother, who is my father. I have to pursue my purpose. I need to go live now with this man, Steve Wrench, who is my dad, but really I'm not going to live with him. I'm going to be orphaned in the valley, and Stephen Camp ended up running my life. I lived in the valley. We called it the valley in the village. The village is northern Arizona, just outside of Pacean,

Arizona, the block, as we called it on, on 7th Street and Mesa. That made it easy for me to fly and travel. So this whole, like, abduction was orchestrated around this. Stephen Marlowe would tell me their story later on where they were like simultaneously my dad would say he did have some excitement of getting to know me but he also had to be very careful because he could never show that with marlo because marlowe was very jealous of it but then marlowe was also like kind of protective because initially stephen and trina were trying to adopt me which is the fucked of shit i would learn that they were trying to adopt me directly so the only reason he proposed marlowe and steve is because marlowe was like danny's not going to be my fucking brother you're not going to adopt danny so she put her foot down

So all, and I didn't share all that detail in the book, but it was like, all those things we would learn were happening. And then me and my mom sit down and I tell her I have to go live with Steve Wrench and Steve Marlowe. And she's like, well, that's okay because I have to protect my marriage. That's what she said to me. And she said this to her 12 year old is I'm like sobbing. So I'm like saying this through gridded teeth and sobbing. And she's like trying not to cry and trying to be strong. And what I would learn is as Steve Wrench pulled up and I got in the truck and left with him that day, the moment I left, she like turned around and,

like collapsed and like scream bloody murder. My seven-year-old sister Noel, who Debbie and Dennis had adopted, would tell me she's like, she's like, I'll never forget it. Like mom collapsed and screamed, they took Danny, they took Danny.

So that's what happens in a fucking cult. Like that type of dynamic is just insane, right? And so I would then spend the next, and we can back up and you can ask any specific questions you want before we even get to like my marriage and then and that falling apart just.com, like I would spend the next. you know, six, seven years before we even get into my 20s, like, hating my mother because she let me go. Yeah.

Like she was the one who didn't fight for me. Right. And now I've bought in on the whole mission because, by the way, what happens next is like, I do continue to get really, really good at chess. So in some ways, was he right? And so now it's all this brainwashing, right? And so if that's the main reason I'm here, anytime I miss my mom, that's weakness. Yeah.

Anytime I want to be with Debbie Samson. now I'm shaming myself privately and crying myself to sleep at night. One, because I'm grieving my mother before she's even died, and I'm just a heartbroken little kid who misses mommy, and I'm also scared shitless that I'm not up to the task. That I can't do this, right? So, and that was a big part of what I would say that most of my teenage years were. We're like becoming this incredible chess player that people knew,

basically being a completely broken human being, not talking to my mom, despite the fact that she still lived in the same collective. shaming myself both sides of the of the coin. I either wasn't, if I missed her, I was weak and I wasn't up to the task. And then, you know, also dealing with the idea that am I ever going to be good enough spiritually to belong in the wrench family? And part of the way you act when you're insecure is you become what? You become arrogant.

You like learn to perform. Ever compensated. I rose through the ranks and became the golden boy of Stephen Camps Eye. And all that is happening while I'm, you know, becoming along with Hikar Nakamura at one point I was the highest rated player in the country under 21. Hikaro has gone on probably people listening to the podcast know who that name is and Hikaru was a and Hikaru was always a genius and a true prodigy more talented than me. I'm not comparing myself to Hikaro in that way, honestly, but also I never really was given the real chance because the thing that really

backfired, we've skipped past Igor, I know you want to talk about Igor, but the thing that really backfired is in doing this, Stephen Camp broke me. I really, I mean, my secret is like I was like probably never playing chess when I didn't have to, right? I was, I was, I was just like not a well, I was not a well kid. And so it was like, I got really, really good, especially considering that I was this broken and didn't put nearly as much effort as I probably would have done if he had just left me with my mom, which is kind of a crazy twist on him, right? Yeah. I mean, the levels of like pain and agony from this, like, it's difficult to really even, like, it also goes against the point I was even saying before of like, oh yeah, you know, like the, any

types any type of like cult organization is like well-meaning and then things go off the rails like what happened in this situation is just straight up manipulation and gaslighting against you against your mom against everyone else kind of involved i'm assuming orchestrated by stephen camp yeah to say like hey you guys don't eat each other which to take a kid from their mom especially that age is like just insane i'm sorry that happened truly like this is the part of the book where like is the most difficult for me to read because it's like i have a kid now like the idea of like my kid getting taken from either my wife or eyes, just like so painful. No, I mean, a lot of what it comes up,

the reason you really start to deal with your shit as a person is every time your kids reach a benchmark, when they reach an age where they are staring you in the face at the age when the thing happened to you. Yeah. Whether it's like the abuse, where it's being taken, and like it is the one part that I will still get, yeah, it's very hard to talk about.

And when I saw my, you know, when my kid turns 12 and I see my daughter and I go, that's how old I was, breaks you. Yeah. like that's the yeah that's the reason you end up dealing with your shit i think in a healthy way like because most of the time we are capable of not loving ourselves but if you love your kid and they look at you like you're fucking the best like it it it fucks with the part of you that has been running away from your shit yeah it's no longer an option when you're like dealing with that

level of like you know self-deprecating thoughts don't begin to cut it yeah right and and i think that That's, um, it's like Shakespearean irony or like, it's like, reading it, I was like, I wish I could just go in there and just put these people together because the whole thing could be avoided. Like your mom screaming on the floor, but justifying to herself, it's actually okay. It's better that he goes because that's better for everyone. And then you being so angry at your mom and screaming to yourself every time you go to sleep saying, why doesn't she love me? And then anytime grief comes up, it's evidence that you're actually not pure enough, that you're not spiritually on your purpose enough. And then I imagine for those years, like, if I was in your position, like, anger and hate and, like, frustration would drive all of my force. Like, every time if I'm in your case, I'd be playing chess just, like, angry. And, like, I'm going to beat this guy because it's the misplaced anger I have against the world that's doing me wrong. Yeah. Is that how it felt? I had a lot of that.

I also had a lot of, like, I think I shared that what became true as well was a lot of anger, a lot of hard, like, a lot of just confusion. Remember, I'm also in on the mission. So when I'm doubting myself, just like we said, I'm not distrusting my abuser. I'm distrusting myself, right? So it's a lot of like self-flagellation, right? You're keeping yourself on the machine, on the flywheel, on the rat, you know, whatever,

because that's actually the safest place to be. Right. And also chess, like, I think you even point this out, like has a beautiful formula to it that is very comforting. Yeah. And so what I was going to get to is like, in addition to what you said, and then re, re kind of like, you know, getting myself on board.

Playing chess became the, it was the escape. It literally saved my life. It tortured me because it was also the thing that I hated because being good at it was the reason I'm in pain. Yeah. But it also became like, I think I described it well, which I appreciate, you know, having a chance to write my book for that reason because I don't even know that I fully appreciated that I felt safest, not in winning or losing, but in the act of playing chess.

Because as long as I was at a tournament playing, I was doing my job. I was sort of like safe from the, I almost like, like can remember the physical anxiety that I carried coming home. Like, because if I was playing chess, it was like, I was doing my job. I was, I was doing my purpose, right? And it's not to say that winning wasn't better than losing. Winning was much better than losing because if I lost, I was in my ego. Everything was on the table again. If I winning, I was bringing people to God.

Like, that was what I was told. If I win, I bring people to God because people don't stay open to God if they're in their ego. And if they're winning, they're in their ego. So the only way to bring a man to humility is to break them. Destroy them. So this all makes sense, right? But this is what I was being told. It's like, oh, like, so if I'm winning, I'm doing God's work.

So winning was better. Don't get me wrong. But it also never ended. So winning didn't come with real relief. It actually just came with the stakes going up over and over again, right? So with time, like, that was really what my relationship with the game became

is it was almost a partner in terms of where we hid. It was like almost a partner in terms of like, you know, it's the only thing that's consistent in your life. It was the only thing that was consistent, right? And that in Igor, right? And it was like Igor, Igor became my, the coach, who, you know, but we should talk about ego for a second. Yeah, he's one of the more interesting characters.

of the whole story. Yeah. This defected Soviet chess champion. Yeah. That is for some reason living in Arizona of all places. And you know him through kind of like the chess club. And then one day he's like your coach. Well, Stephen Camp recruited him.

That was what happened. But he was like at one of like the chess emporium. And so like you kind of saw this like beastly sort of ogreish man playing chess and drinking. Yeah. And then all of a sudden he's in front of you being like, all right, let's go. Yeah. And so tell me what is, what is, how does he?

So Igor Yvanov, as you said, defected from the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. And his own story is its own crazy story. Yeah. Like, and again, I was not there, but I've heard enough validation and enough people to be like, yeah, this was true. I mean, because also he wasn't the only defector of the Soviet Union at the time. It was pretty rampant. And chess was like a ticket out of the Soviet Union. Because unlike in the U.S. where chess is not respected, chess was a state-sponsored sport.

It was an opportunity for the Russians at this time. Kind of its own Shelby school. It had its thing. thing to be like if you're good at chess, you get to travel the world. It was just like being in a cult. Literally being in the Soviet Union was like being in a chess cult because the opportunity that you got to like do anything in life or to experience freedom and have your own autonomy was chess was a way out. And it's your purpose. They show how smart the Soviets are. It's the same book. Yeah, it's 100%. In fact, I don't think I even fully appreciated that until we started writing the book

and we started putting it through this like, what are all the elements of your story? And you start to go like, wow, like what Igor grew up in and what he experienced as a member of the Soviet Union, very similar. And another reason why he probably connected and resonated with me, but he ends up defecting crazy story where he like literally runs across asylum lines and like KGV tries to grab him back. After years of competing in Canada and the U.S. chess circuit and all these things, he ends up in Arizona. We run into him at the local chess club, Chess Emporium. I think we actually first met him at the Arizona Open, which was like, same thing, but like a bigger tournament, not actually at the Emporium. Either way, Igor gets recruited to come live in the collective by Stephen Camp, because

this is sort of like the peak of I'm 12. So one thing that Stephen Camp used to say in defense of my talents, and it's funny, I'll say it now and not that it matters, but he would always go, remember, Danny was almost a master before Igor showed up. And he always loved saying that because he wanted to put Igor in his place. Yeah, he doesn't want Igor to get the crime. Yeah, so Stephen Camp would go, like, hey, like, Danny, I think Igor showed up when I was 13, now I'm a wrench, but he understood the whole dynamic of how I was like taken away from my mom. And I was already very talented. Stephen Camp isn't wrong about that. But Igor came in at this time when I, under the auspices of being with a higher spiritual family, was basically orphaned to live in the valley, which were

these homes that the collective owned, but nobody really lived in. They were used as like way stations for like all kinds of stuff. Someone could be demurged that they were in trouble. Sometimes someone was going to school at ASU, so they used the house to like do school two nights a week. It was like this very interesting like place for like nomads moving in and out of either the collective itself or doing some sort of worldly purpose where they needed the homes. So there were these two houses.

I think I'm allowed to say that address. We're going to keep it because people, people live there now, not part of the collective. But these two homes were used. And I was moved down to live at one of these homes along with Igor. And so Igor and I were like traveling the world all the time together. And who Igor was, we gave his story. But Igor was an abusive alcoholic.

I mean, Igor was a, he was, I'll just say what I used to say. Like, Igor was a racist, Russian, abusive, raging alcoholic. That was what I would say to describe him in like the most fair terms. He was belligerent. He said things you should never be saying to like kids. He talked about his sexual exploits. He was just a total nut. and I learned to make a screwdriver half and half vodka OJ at a very young age.

And so Igor was my chess trainer. He was my coach and he was drinking. Talk about someone who woke up drinking. I mean, he was literally, there are infamous stories of Igor drinking in chess tournaments in ways that are the stuff of legend in terms of what he would do. And because he was also like a fucking genius, right? And so he had his own reputation.

But Igor and I developed this relationship because I spent probably more time with him at times than anybody. I was like with the wrenches over the holidays. and other times too, but it was a very tangled web, right? I'm like presenting to the rest of the collective that I'm a wrench now and I've overcome blood and I'm being put on a pedestal as the golden boy. So I definitely want to tout that. Meanwhile, I'm crying myself to sleep at night,

really hardly spending any time with the actual wrench family traveling the world with Igor playing chess. Like that was the reality and Stephen Camp was in charge. And so, you know, Igor and I would get into a different time. Like he never, it never sat well with him that it wasn't with my mom. He would be mad at me. you should go back to Debbie and all these things. But regardless of that and the other painful parts of my adolescence

in the ways that I already described, he was there for several years. Ultimately, he ended up leaving and going back to, he had a wife, which is a crazy story. He openly would say, I married her for her money, which, of course, ultimate twist of fate. When he went back and lived with Elizabeth, he would get cancer and die long before her.

So again, not getting into Igor's story, but that part of it is in the book and also has, was very interesting to see play out. But yeah, Igor Ivanov is like, I've been told by people, like, my producer, my producer, the producer who bought the rights to my book to be a movie is like, you know, the Igor story itself is like either its own movie or the reason this should actually be a miniseries and not a movie, because you almost like, he was telling me his strategy for it. And, and, you know, I wouldn't have given my rights to this guy if I didn't feel like we were

very aligned on the things that really matter. I'm protective over aspects of how the collective is framed. I feel protective over how my relationship with my mom comes across. There are parts of my movie that I'm protective over, while also understanding I'm not going to be able to control everything in the end if he finds a great writer and director we want to do it. But the one thing we've kind of joked about is like, you almost have to cut Igor out of the movie or you have to, like, figure out a way

because it's like the character itself is like, it's just larger than life. And it really was a true story. He's just, he was larger than life. And would sit there and like yell at you, but also like say how great you are. Yeah, it would do both. He would go in and out of both, right? I often said in the book that like he, he was kinder when he was drunk. Like when he was sober is when the pain would come out. When he was sober is when he was mean. Yeah. And when he was drunk, at least even if he was slobbery or inappropriate or like just whatever, like he was, he would sing all the time. He would walk around singing songs. He would play the piano. Like, and he genuinely like, I think the care he had, not just for chess, he loved chess, obviously.

but also like for me was there. I think when he was sober is when he was a little bit more like his shit would come out and he was often very hard to deal with. So which is weird to say, that often sounds like what a child of an alcoholic would also say.

They were almost worse when they were sober. Yeah. You know, because now they're angry and all the reasons they drink to numb are no longer being numbed, right? And that's, I don't think that's a super uncommon thing. Yeah. And then this little stretch of time,

you're heartbroken by the family situation, but also you're a, world traveling chess champion. And you go through your teen years and become by 18 the, what, the high school chess champion of America? Like you're ranked maybe in the top five, maybe the top three? Like what was the final ranking that you had by 18? No, at one point, like I said, I was the second highest rated.

When I was 19, Hikaru was 17, but he was higher rated than me. Hikaru's like almost two years younger right about. And so, but other than Hikaru, I was like the top ring player under 21. And yes, I won the high school national championship. Did you play Hikaru? We played Hikara and I played when we were younger. We haven't played in a long time. But in those early years.

Yeah, we did. I had a decent record. We played a lot of blitz. I mean, I would hold my own in. In tournament. Yeah. Wow. I won't tell too many Hikaru's stories because we had our own little, like, rivalry.

We were like, I remember one time I beat him and he was not happy. And he, like, slammed the table and the clock and different things. But again, Hikaru was legitimately a genius. I mean, I think since Fischer, Hikaru is like, the, biggest and best talent to like come out of the West. I mean, not to take anything away from Fobby, who's a friend of mine,

Fabiano Caruana. Fabiano competed against Magnus in 2018 for the world title. So I think Hikarro and Favvi are undeniably number one and number two, but I think there's arguments to just say that Hikaru is like the most talented player of his generation. And like, I don't belong in the same category there. But again,

before my life fell apart, we were rivals. and we were very much, you know, in closer kind of contention. Yeah. So at 18, on the outside, you've, you're achieving your purpose. You're on your way. You've staying the book, like, I'm going to become a grand, you know, GM. Like, it's going to happen.

And everything's going amazing. On the inside, you are completely emotionally destroyed, like fully disassociated, I'm sure, like, numb for much of this, I can imagine. And then everything derails. Take me to that part where the, purpose that your entire life is given to you by God himself, all of a sudden, it falls apart. What actually happens when I'm taken away from my mom, even though it was under the auspices of the wrenches, they're not really involved, certainly not day-to-day, my caretakers.

I'm often alone with Igor. And Stephen Camp, who's the actual boss, is not going to raise me himself. Like, in fact, at this time, him and Trina, we're actually spending a lot of time in San Diego, which is another thing that led to a lot of parts of the collective falling apart. is them kind of spending community money to do this thing. And again, I'm not going to get into all that, but there was a bit of a red flag when the leaders of an organization are never there. Yeah, exactly. And so it starts to fall apart because my health starts to fall apart. So when you're in that dynamic of if everyone owns, because no one would say that nobody was parenting me, they would say everyone was parenting me, right?

There were surrogate mothers in the valley. There were different people doing their best to, make sure that Danny and Igor have food and water, right? And like make sure that when it is just Danny, because Igor was also, he would go to things that I didn't go to. He was certainly he was competing at a higher level. There were times where he would also fall off the map and be crazy. So it was really like taking care of Danny. And eventually other kids would also start to come to the block.

Other kids with purposes would start to use the valley as like a way station. A couple of the young girls got very good at ballet. There was like there were girls who were going to be ballerinas. That was their purpose. there were other people who started to go to college, a little bit older than me, a little bit younger, right? So when you're in your teenage years, imagine this environment where the valley is kind of like

a way station for kids with purpose. And Danny just happened to be the longest tendered one because I had been there since I was 13. I was like the number one misfit toy because I had just been there longer, right? So there were kids and we were all sort of like being neglected, but because I had been there for a long time, especially for like the couple of years where it was really me alone, I had started to develop ear issues.

And so the big thing that the world would know about is by the time we get to me being like 17, 18, 19, and I had these, this medical tragedy. We're going to talk about that. What they didn't know was like kind of how it had gotten there. How did this happen, right? And so I was swimming a ton in the valley. I loved swimming. Just in general, it was like therapy for me. I would sometimes catch Igor nude sunbathing, by the way, which was also its own weird.

thing for like young adolescents. So I'm, I love swimming, but I would literally be swimming all the time if I could. And then I would, and then I would fly. And then we would also drive up to the village and back depending on what was going with the community. And so I started to develop these ear issues and I started to develop like pretty bad earache aches, but I was not really talking about it. Part of it was because when you bring up like a health issue in the collective, there was very much this like Christian science mentality, which is any physical ailment is a manifestation of a spiritual issue, which again, I can get behind aspects of how our cellular DNA is affected by our well-being. And there's science about that.

Body keeps the score. Exactly. I'm not going to get into the justification of it. I'm just going to jump past the spiritual justification and just say how it was weaponized is like, here's this idea that this kid is afraid to talk about his health issues because, one, he doesn't really know who his parents are. And two, when he brings it up, I was literally told, well, what are you not hearing? If your ears hurt, what are you not hearing? Which, by the way, if you're into, spiritual medicine. There's interpretations where for children, it's the opposite. If a kid's ears hurt, it's because they're not being heard, which by the way, if you want to, so that, so what's funny is I would learn that later from my therapist, which is like, not only is that

wrong. And not only do some people not believe in any of the spiritual ailment, physical manifestation stuff, but even if it was right, she's like, when it comes to a kid, that actually thing is supposed to be reversed with kids, because kids are totally innocent. Anytime a children's ears hurt, it's not what they're not hearing. It's what they're not being heard, which by the way, just fascinating point. So we move on. So now I am in my late teens and we're starting to get into where, you know, my wife enters the picture as a young girl who her family was was in and out of the collective and we're probably going to have to start talking about Shauna, not that I don't want to, but like she becomes the most important part of my life. And ultimately, I would say she's the

hero of my story. We're still married today and it's been a lot of work to make that work. But Sean and I do start dating. Her family has now moved back to the collective. We'll digress. and give her a little bit of her story in a second. But she and I go from literally going on like our first date to being told we should move in together because that was how the collective work. So I'm 17, she's 19. We're living together.

I win the national high school championship while living with like a woman, right? Which not many people in high school are like in that position. Total secret to the world. But she's the first one who starts talking to me about like, honey, like your ears hurt. Like what is going on here? Like so she was trying to. mother me. She, you know, she wasn't my mother, but she was probably the first, like,

caretaker I had because now I have, like, a partner who gives a shit about me. And is effectively your wife at this point. Effectively my wife, we're living together, right? And I went to the, after winning the high school nationals, I went to the U.S. Junior Championship in Kansas, which is still these days, always held over the summer. This year, it was late June, early July, in Linsbury, Kansas. And what had been several years of, Visit BetMGM casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly.

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I would go in and out of really bad tinnitus, times where I felt like things were bad, and then they would stop. Again, I wasn't talking about it. I am flying back from Linsberg, Kansas, and my ears literally, like, exploded, like on the plane. And it was just absolutely horrific. Sinus pressure on an airplane doesn't begin to cut it. It was the worst. So glad I got off that plane eventually, because sometimes when you think about carrying pain, and there's nowhere to go. It's like the reason people pass out, you get dizzy because it was just,

I had, it was explosive and it was the worst. And in like an instant, I lost like all my hearing. Like it was like, it felt like everything had just like gunshots next to your head. It was like, boom, right? What happened? And it was so much pain. When I get home, Shawna takes me to the ER. ER ends up like giving me a bunch of like, you know, crazy Advil, like not normal Advil, right? The big, the big Advil, the big Advil, whatever, 800 milligrams. And I, I, I, we get into an E&T emergency. At this point, Marlowe gets involved because she's my acting mother, stepmother. And again, there are parts of our relationship, my dad and Marlow, that have gotten better over these years of being with them. But it's still a very, a very fucked up situation. And we go to an E&T who, they're doing basic stuff and they're like,

hey, like there's an ear infection, but like we can't quite see past the canal. You got to go to like a specialist, right? So we go to the specialist and he cuts open enough of the eardrum in hopes that a bunch of stuff comes out because at least then it's like temporary. And he's like, nothing's coming out, like, but I can see enough in there that there's some scar tissue, which means there's an old, and so like, what happens with infection is like, you know, it's a growth or it's a thing. And it like, if you have enough infections you don't deal with, it becomes like just like scar tissue. So we end up having a surgery. And when he cuts open my ear, he's like, I mean, I don't want to put words in his mouth. He's in a miracle man, Dr. Fucci,

Arizona, Arizona Hearing and Balance Center, best doctor ever. He cuts open my ears. And, and, he said it was it was like a tree that had grown into a fence. And what happens is like then when the tree falls, like the whole thing comes with it, right? I had so many years of neglected growth benign, not malignant, right? But it was a growth in both of the ears of just neglected ear infections that what had happened was like it was holding itself together with minor earaches,

but then the whole thing came down. So it's called a tymonoplasti, which is where they, you know, they cut up in a ear, they remove scar tissue and infection to both ears. Then he did a stapidectomy, which is where you try to rebuild the stapies bone with artificial.

Your stapies bone holds up your eardrum in almost like a slingshot style bone. That's how it looks. And so as sound comes into your eardrum, it's held by a stapies bone that is allowing it to reverberate. And it's like a tiny little thing. And the reverberation of your stapies bone

from your hearing aid is what allows the sound to be funneled appropriately to your nerve endings. So when people lose your hearing when you get old, it's a couple of things. It's either your bones erode because you get older. So a lot of people state these bones will slowly erode naturally. I became an expert on this because of what I went through. Or you damage your nerve endings. Most people damage their nerve endings with loud sound.

Sometimes freak accidents happen. Sometimes it's like a concert. But hearing loss is usually one of those two things. Damage nerve ending. So the nerves are not firing. Or it's like bone loss. So I have a Baja in my head. This is a hole for it.

Oh, whoa. Early is cochlear implant. So what he ends up doing is a stapidectomy in both my ears where he rebuilds the stapies bone with like artificial kind of metal plastic to kind of hold the eardrum. And then they put a cochlear implant. One of the reasons I'm so loud. And so the loud... I didn't know that you have a cochlear implant.

Yeah. And so the metal... Initially, I actually had the outer extension too where I was plugging in and out of the cochlear. But he says I'm the best work he ever did. The staphidectomy's held up so well that I regained... in my in my right it's only about 60 in my in my left it's like 75 my left year is better so I gained I regained a bunch of my hearing loss because the bone that was eroded by this infection that came down with the fence was able to be rebuilt and my nerve endings are very

healthy and my eardrum was generally healthy I still have very sensitive ear drums I have to be careful they perforate easily like if I you know I can't go underwater without like heavy duty earplugs because pressure scuba diving is off the table right so I can't ever skydive which sucks because I always wanted to skydive but I can't I can't do mass and violent pressure change. Yeah. So, does weather affect it?

Weather does affect it. I get like, I get like vertigo easily, like dizziness because like the eardrums are very like, they're not solid in ways and they're very sensitive to pressure. And so it is, I'll have times in the day where like I do a thing, which is a thing,

if anyone out there has tinnitus, thenitis, if you, if you like cup your ears really tightly and you like squeeze in and then you tap your nerve endings, it actually can be very relieving to like people who struggle with like space and balance in their ears. So you like suction and then I tap my nerve endings.

It like calms your nerves. And anyway, I know all kinds of tricks to kind of help myself deal with it. So so what happens is, yeah, like I have a medical tragedy in the heart of this collective because I'm the village golden boy who actually is anything but, you know what I mean? In many ways I'm like, I'm like orphaned and neglected. And my, and I'm getting to know my dad and Marla. We are developing a better relationship. I still hate my mom at this.

time I'm still heartbroken by her. I still miss her. You haven't talked to her at this point. I haven't talked to her. Like, by the time I would really properly have a conversation, it would have been 10 years since I was taken. Right. There is a heartbreaking moment. There was a heartbreaking moment where I got back together with her when I was 16. For an hour. For an hour. And that was, if anything, it made it harder. And we, you know, thank you for, thank you for reading my story. So you know, and we'll just leave that cliffhanger. There was one night of like pretty devastating attempted reconciliation between me and my mom and a very drunk Trina Camp and it didn't go well.

So people can check that out. But other than that night, yeah, so now I'm, my chess career goes from, I was just returning from the U.S. Junior Championship, had just won the high school nationals in April a few months earlier. And Sean and I had plans of, which in hindsight,

we kind of would be honest with ourselves, were probably our first plans to maybe get out of the collective. We were planning on going to Europe. And like I was going to travel. There's this whole series called the Catalan series in Spain where there's a bunch of norm tournaments. A norm in chess is where in order to become an international master or a grandmaster, you have to both achieve a certain Elo, a certain rating,

but you also have to perform in an internationally sanctioned tournament at a certain level. That's called a norm. I don't know how the word norm came up, but I think it's like part of the word performance. I don't even, honestly, in chess, I don't know where the word norm originated, but you earn a performance norm, and you have to do this a few different times along with achieving the ELO, to get the international master title, which I did,

or eventually the grandmaster title, right? Now, one quick question on the air surgery. Who paid for that? So luckily, my dad had incredible insurance from his parents, Blue Cross Blue Shield. Oh, wow. So my dad's, it was covered by insurance. One of the craziest things about my dad's,

my dad was one of the breadwinners of the collective. And so we can come back to where all the different things that really started to tear the collective apart, but there were always these unique dynamics of everything was merged, just like in animal form, everyone's equal, some are just more equal than others. Yeah. Because my dad had health insurance. He's not going to not take health insurance from his wealthy parents, but he's not legally

allowed to have people that aren't his kids on it. So what was weird is I would find out when I first came to my dad's family that I actually had always been on his insurance, even though I didn't even know he was my dad. Right. Because I was legally his first son. Right. Dallas was a stepson he adopted from Marlowe from Marlowe's previous marriage. Marlowe had her first kid very young, also sad stuff for her. You know, there's a lot of things about being the oldest daughter of the cult leaders that is her cross to bear and awful, right? And she was basically a child bride, like married to my dad by her mom. And they have their own just fucked up issues, right? So but Marlowe and Marl had Dallas from her previous marriage. I was my dad's oldest son. So I learned that like I had actually almost. always been covered by his Blue Cross Blue Shield. Even without knowing it. Even without knowing.

Crazy. Crazy, right? And that would make sense because why would you not have that be the case? Because you have the benefit of doing it, right? Yeah. So, yeah, it really came in huge. It came in clutch at this time that they, I mean, this was hundreds of thousands of dollars were the surgery over the course of basically two years.

Because when you cut open an ear, do a timetoplasti, it's a very complicated word to spell, like T, Y, M, people can look it out, but tyminaplasty, and then you do it on the other ear. You can't do them both back to back because you have to give a time to heal before you know. Then so it's like three months, three months. Now you have to give this one in additional like eight months before you can rip it open again and do the stapidectomy because you have to let it heal. Then it was this. So I was like out of commission, no traveling, no chest during these multiple surgeries and in the middle of that in additional Baja, which is a bone anchor hearing aid. It's one of the earliest versions of the cochlear implant.

And the way it works is it goes into your skull and it kind of reverberates the sound off of the whole skull. because what my type of hearing loss is was extreme bone loss from trauma because what I lost was when, like I said, when the tree grew into the fence, it was the stapies bone that came down. I was otherwise very young and healthy with good nerve endings.

And so I was a great candidate for Baja. Could just fix the bone. Because you fix the bone or you fix the access to the bone of reverberation, I'm good. So I actually ended up as tragic as this was and it ultimately put me on the path of chess.com so you could say how lucky am I, right?

which is a weird twist of ending, right? Talk about the obstacle is the way. Yeah. Now, the non-chest person listening to this is like, all right, dude, your ears hurt. Like, just keep playing chess and you're still going to be the best, right? Yeah. But no, I mean, so basically, when you lose, like, two years of, like, high-level competitive travel, just talk to any athlete who, like, would disappear from their sport for that long.

I would say I'm not being a victim, and to say that it was, like, it's a difficult. thing to recover from, and it's a cutthroat game and a cutthroat world, right, in terms of your ability, in order to play at a high level, you don't have to do, play at a high level. And you have to be a tournament. If it comes to Catch 22, if you're not competing at a high level, you're not competing at a high level. Yeah. And this is, it's not like, there are certain levels of knowledge and expertise as I would

grow into becoming the face of chess.com and I would teach professionally. You know, there's a lot of world where you could say, I have the knowledge of one of the best chess players in the world. The ability to execute is a very different thing. Just like there's a reason Phil Jackson can coach the Lakers, but he's not running up and down the court with Kobe anymore. Because he can't physically do it, right? And so knowledge and execution are very different things.

And I think people underestimate that with chess, because they think it's cerebral. They think it's not physical. But your ability to execute what you know is more than half the fucking battle, right? And so when you're not competing at a high level, you're not handling time pressure well. You're not handling your nerves well. You're miscalculating.

You're rusty. And so, you know, you lose a lot of your time. And then in addition to that, like, what did I actually do with my life over that time? I got married to my young wife. We had our first kid when we were just babies. She was 21. I was 19, although I had just turned 20 when Nash was born. So I'm 40 and I have a 20-year-old son now.

Yeah. We have four kids. But, like, I can hold the opposing truth. Speaking of the mental, spiritual gymnastics we're having on a lot of conversations, was saying that, like, in no way just the tragedy of going from being one of the top players in the world for my age, but certainly the country, having this whole plan of what I was going to achieve and having it all crashed down was not devastating, heartbreaking, and it led me to like the dark times ahead that we'll talk about. But I'm also sitting in a place now where,

oh my God, I'm so grateful for everything that happened, right? Because like, getting married and then also having a kid is a weird thing because like, it's not the statistically recommended path. It's not something I'm telling my current 20-year-old to have a kid at all. But if I didn't have Shauna and a baby, I don't know what I would have done. Like, they became like a reason to live, like literally, right? Like you have an anchor, you have a purpose, an actual purpose to some degree, right? And so the genius breeds necessity is very, or necessity breeds genius, I'm sorry, is very real because like we barely made our marriage work. We're going to get into all that stuff. But if it wasn't for the idea that there was a tether, especially given how I felt

about myself. My chess career had fallen apart. My spiritual reason for existing was gone. Talk about like, you know, when they say like, you know, like child actors have problems when the career doesn't work out, right? It's like I was dealing with that level of just self-hatred, self-worth. Stephen Camp now didn't want anything to do with me because I was no longer going to become world chess champion.

In fact, he was angry that initially we were like running a local chess business together. And then Sean and I had a kid and I wanted to take over the business. and build a life for myself. He and I had a bunch of conflict around that. He wouldn't give it to me, even though he had, like, in many ways, use the chess kids to build the business. I had to buy the business from him with me and my dad. He hated me because my dad in camp became, they went to war,

which again, part of what's going on with the bigger collective is there's a generation of people that are all my dad's generation who are starting to inherit money from their dying wealthy parents. So what's the fastest way for, like, the shit to hit the fan is, like, money. Right? Like, now, like, people don't want to tithe anymore. People are also righteously angry about a lot of the hypocrisies of how Trina and Stephen are using the money. There's, I don't know what I mean.

I could talk about it for hours and hours, but again, these are things I touch on a little bit in the book, but I purposely don't tell because they're not my story other than what I feel is justified and enough to help frame what I was dealing with. So basically, these two father figures I have hate each other's guts, all kinds of money power dynamics going on. Meanwhile, I'm coming to terms with the fact that my spirit. reason for existing on the planet has gone away, trying to make a life for myself with my wife and young baby. Also at this time, my wife is the one who's starting to go, you know, honey, we've now been together for three years. And so what did happen with your mom? You don't think that's a little weird that you don't talk to your mom? And I would be like, I love my biological mother, Debbie. I don't want to talk about it. And she was so careful with me because if she had gone aggressively

at, yo dude, you're fucked up. And I'm not going to have you raise our son and be an asshole because all the times you want to talk about this stuff, like, you're clearly got issues. And I'm abusing alcohol to say the least at this time before I'm even 21. And then opioids would come in as well because what would happen with the surgeries that I basically kept secret from everybody as long as I could is when you get heavy your surgeries, what do you think they're prescribing? Yeah, like oxy.

We're talking oxy and Xanax and. and, you know, Perkocet and the things, right? And coming off of those things after two years is very, very hard. This is how people get addicted to those things, right? And so in addition to the reasons that I was a perfect candidate to become an abuser. I'm literally a traumatized, broken, abducted. Again, this wasn't in my book, but I was physically abused.

It was all these things, right? And now I'm having this trauma that, is cementing it pairs well with what they say this is a wine that pairs well with this you know what I mean so I'm a fucked up individual who's now got a trauma in a bunch of Xanax and seen right and a bunch of Vicodin and a bunch of Percocet and all these things right yeah Xanax would come later initially it's Vicodin and percocet oxy painkillers when you're when you grow from that into like struggling with anxiety over the next couple of years and then we have our second baby Warner um because again the collective pushed young couples to have kids right Again, I don't regret that at all because, again, I can hold opposing truths. I fucking love my boys and I love my girls. And also I can go like, you think it was a really good idea to push me and Shauna to have a second baby at that time? Yeah, of course.

You got to look at the whole thing and go, wow. But that was when, you know, I got prescribed my first anti-anxiety meds, which are very different to antidepressants, right? I also was getting, I was bouncing in and out of like, you know, first it was like Lexa Pro and then like Paxil, eventually landed on Zoloft because. Lexapro, like, I had like super vivid nightmares and like Paxil I couldn't sleep. It was the opposite. So I ended up on Zoloft and like Xanax or Kalanapin. And that's when I was a, I started abusing those things, which was not just taking more than you should, taking them more often, but also like with alcohol.

And so hiding it, I'm sure. Hiding it, especially from Shauna. Because Shauna knows that I have a prescription and she's trying to help me deal with it in like the healthiest ways possible. Let's try to talk to your mom or at least talk about your mom, right? And I'm not going to go into it. that, right? And so, you know, those were the times where, like, I've been careful around this part of my story because I've also, I feel like I've seen enough of what real, what real addiction

looks like. And I know that, you know, being an addict and having that disease, I don't want to, like, in any way, grandstand or claim something that is like, like, you know, to say that I'm trivializing what people get through with addiction. But I also would say I have my own experience of addiction is not the problem. The problem is that addiction is the solution. The problem is that alcohol is the solution. It's not a good solution, but it's a reason people are choosing,

there's a reason people are choosing that as a way to deal with their thing. Addiction to anything is not the problem, it's the solution. And so without pretending like I'm a therapist or in any way going to hop on a pedestal about how people can work through their own addictions, I've gone through my own journey on this, and I very strongly believe from my own experience, that what really heals everything has to, in the end, be about connection and about love and about

dealing with your shit in a very honest way, because as long as you're shaming and demonizing, addictive and self-deprecating behavior, you're not appreciating that the pain this person is, is this is a solution. This is not the problem. And that's why I kind of don't always like approaching alcohol, even itself, from certain other traditional methods of how we, I don't want to get in all that, but I would just say that for me, Shauna was the key to not just bringing up what I was going through and how I was running from and what I was trying to use as the solution. Were you ever buying pills or like accessing pills

that weren't from your doctor? No, I had enough. I didn't need to do that. You never got to the point where you dumped out the bottle and you were like, no, shit. No. I had to go to a point where I told other people not to take it. Like other people who were like, they wanted to borrow it or like, you know, like have some, like, no, you can't have some because I needed it and or that's, you know, but it's a, I would say that's probably a larger issue with our general medical system is like the ability for people to prescribe and not be held accountable when I wasn't even being pushed toward proper therapy or even like a psychiatrist yet, which is different than a psychologist, right? A psychiatrist who's licensed to really deal with the, you know,

the science of what the drugs are doing and monitor it. I eventually did get a healthy psychiatrist and she was great. Won't say her name, nor will I say the name of my therapist. But, like, I've gotten a lot of great help. And I have, you know, I'll Tarantino, where I sit now, I went from years of, started with alcohol, opioid abuse, recovering from my surgeries, marriage that shouldn't have made it. And we're definitely going to go back and talk about healing with my mom.

But eventually, I was in a healthy spot. I was on antidepressants for, without abusing anything for like seven years. eventually I started exercising much more regularly. I'm probably in the best shape of my life now at 40 and like thinking about where I was as far as in my mid to late 20s and to hear. So exercise, you know, mental health. I do a lot of breath work. I'm big on all those things and I am now completely off antidepressants. I will drink socially from time to time, but it's totally in check.

I really drink hardly at all unless it's like, unless it's part of what I would argue is the connection of the evening, not that alcohol is needed for that. but I will engage socially with alcohol, but it's very rare. And, you know, I do a lot of the work on anytime I desire alcohol, I still treat myself like a recovering alcoholic because starting with the why you crave the thing, accepting that why and then talking to that why, understanding that why, feeling your anxiety, feeling your pain is the first step toward like, they say that the mind is a wonderful servant, a terrible master. Any craving you have is ultimately potentially,

eventually a good servant but a terrible master. I think it's very important that we don't demonize certain aspects of what people crave. This has been my experience. And we create a conversation around why do you crave it? So that even then if you do decide to go and engage, there's a very different conversation around what you've dealt with. So I'm going to get off that pedestal because I work a lot on this stuff. I will be doing it for the rest of my life because I'm someone who abused these things. I'm someone who, you know, engaged in self-harmful behavior, you know, whether we,

officially say I checked the label ever of an alcoholic or an addict is almost irrelevant in terms of like what I what I engaged with and what I learned. Right. But you can imagine a traumatized person that's using alcohol to cope and then they cut out alcohol completely. That's a great step. But if there's still an underlying trauma that's never assessed, it's like you didn't really fully approach what's actually causing us. And yeah, and when it comes to what they, what we understand know more and more about this stuff is like what you resist persists in terms of if you are judging a certain part of yourself, you think it gets smaller? It gets bigger, you know what I mean? And so a big part of like learning how to deal with your cravings and the fears you have is like all of it has to be an open

conversation with what part of you is needing this, what part of you feels drawn to it. And I think, again, it's a lot to get into, but that has definitely been a journey that I've learned a lot about. That part of Buddhism has been re-invited into my life in a very helpful way, like the radical acceptance nature of life. and appreciating kind of how to deal with the balance of all that stuff. So, yeah, I'll just say that, yeah, I think that if you take someone into a position where even if they break free of the bonds, they have a guilty relationship with the craving itself and they're not properly understanding the why they ever got there from the get begin with

and full circle, they appreciate that it's a solution. It's not a problem. Ask yourself, what is it trying to solve? That's the key that I think really, where the real work is, right? And so, so that was a lot of, you know, and back to this timeline with my wife and, Sean, what was the real problem probably more than anything is that I was a brokenhearted, abducted, abused person, right? And I don't know why I've had a hard time saying this today. I've already talked about openly on Raines podcast, but I was also sex. It was not,

it was not by Stephen Camp. And it's important to me that I address that because there are some very weird things about our relationship in the book. You know what I'm talking about. But like, I like to put that out there because it did happen. I believe there was an where a number of people were experienced this type of abuse. There were things about the collective that I think allowed for predator behavior to exist. And there are things there. But I was I was also physically and other abuse. And so not dealing with all of these things in addition to the pain of what happened with my mom,

like I said, I was a ripe candidate for things to not go well when I got access to alcohol and opioids. And now purpose falling apart. And now and now your spiritual self-worth is like is like gone, right? And so, and that was, you know, we don't need to get into all the fights because they're in there, but basically the darkest time of our marriage is like, eventually my wife is like, you know, get the fuck out or start changing. Rock bottom is a hard thing to say because I just, I don't think, again, again, I've already given probably enough opinions where experts are going to be like this guy, whatever, but I don't really care because I'm coming from a good place of wanting to help. I'll say like, where there was a rock bottom,

find definitive moment or not. Like for me, there was enough clarity around some things that happened at that time. My relationship with Stephen Marlow was put on blast in a healthy way because they like really crossed the line. Shauna basically had fed up, had been fed up with me. My mom, to her credit, just wouldn't go away because what happened was we left the valley, me and Shauna, with our second baby now Nash and Warner. We moved back to the village, sort of out of the frying pan into the fire.

We're back in the Trina and Stephen collective. Stephen Marlowe are at full war with Stephen and Trina over the collective money dynamics. It's a crazy, crazy time. In hindsight, I now know this was literally the collective imploding on itself. People were choosing sides. I think a much more common cult story, people always go like, how did you escape a cult or how did it fall apart? I think more of these cults than you think of don't end in the violently horrific public ways of Jones Town or Heaven's Gate or Waco, whatever you want to get into.

most of them, I think, have a more common story of basically the members turning on themselves. And eventually everyone just kind of destroys themselves because of the undelt with shit or the money and the power and the stuff. And so this is definitely more this story. And we're now back in the village. And my mom, like I said, so we're kind of at war with Stephen Marlowe. There's all this stuff that we've gone through since I just shared that I was a victim of sex. It was like I actually had like opened up about this and that had really messed up my relation with my dad for different reasons.

There was all kinds of stuff that was going on. And my mom just like wouldn't go away. She wouldn't stop coming over. And the point where I had to tell Shauna like, if she's going to come over, you tell me when she's coming so I can leave. She can be with my kids, but I don't want to be around the woman. And like, Shauna wouldn't stop and my mom wouldn't stop. And so, you know, in hindsight, this was, you know, obviously the greatest thing that could

have ever happened, right? Because of where, where things were headed with my mom and the very sad, you know, story that that was. And so, um, it's one of those things where you're forever grateful that you showed up, you showed up to a battle and somebody else just dropped the sword. It's like that was one of those moments, right, where I was just so angry and so heartbreak and broken and so devastated. And I came ready to fight. And she just dropped everything. And it was one of those moments where that obviously was incredible and important. We began to heal our relationship. It didn't happen overnight. But the twist ending to my story, why I get emotional for everybody is my mom would then have a massive stroke and die.

Didn't see that coming, right? And as far as the lessons that that would bring on a lot of levels, as far as grief goes. And so, yeah, after basically my mom being back in my life for three years and doing a lot of work and healing with her to the best we could, she had a massive stroke at the age of 62. She didn't die right away. it was a very painful experience of now, now being the oldest son of a woman who was not my mother, who I'm taking care of in and out of these nursing homes, who's like, you know, hardly there and incontinent

and trying to be nursed back to health. And at the time, me and Josh and Noel, my younger brother, half-brother, like I said, my mom had kind of a one-night stand at some point long ago with a guy who came in out of the collective, and then Debbie and Dennis had adopted Noel is. at the time we didn't know it because we're like our mom's going to get up and walk you know what i mean like that's what we're doing in hindsight it was actually a very fast and aggressive two years and a very

good look at the problems with our health care system to be honest with you and and so you know very quickly i went from barely having healed with the woman to losing her and the time you were taking care of her were you happy to be taken care you can't run away from who you are and i spent this whole time thinking she wasn't my mother and I was devastated by what she had done and this relationship. And it was like the moment she had a stroke, I was the oldest son and just like knew exactly what I was supposed to do. I handled everything. Like we very quickly just took care of what we could. And she was broke. There was no part of any any sort of like getting her estate in an order other than like one of the most fucked up things is like because you're broke, you're on the worst part of

some of these systems where in order to get on the it's called all techs which at the time is the Arizona long-term care services all techs um and the is actually a very good public health system as far as states go I've learned this but all techs can't be used if you have like any assets in your name so I'm like putting the car in no well's name and signing the house to Josh and his wife and we're like we're like trying to be like she doesn't have any value both of these things were like under But like you just try to take care of anything that the banks can claim and you try to basically be as poor as possible. Right. Because the system is so broken that there's no help coming unless you have nothing.

And so I did the things I would do. And again, like I, you know, paid out of pocket to get her into a nursing home initially because she had no money. And you have to like, one of the weird things about the system is if you're in a hospital, you can't get certain levels of assistance because you're kind of considered still in like ICU. but the Mayo Clinic doesn't want you there. They're basically trying to kick you out because they know you're a candidate of not paying them a dime. And they would never say this.

I don't know how powerful the Mayo Clinic is. Maybe they're like Disney going to assume me, but I don't fucking care. Like they were the worst. By the way, I love them. They saved my mother's life. She had a massive stroke. I was actually defined as a subdural hematoma,

which is a massive brain bleed, like larger than a quarter. That's what a... I don't know the difference between a stroke and a subdural hematoma. It's basically a massive stroke, but at a certain level, it's classified as a subdural hematoma.

And so it was great. And there was surgery and all that stuff. But then it becomes you start to see the dark side of the moment they understood. Like we were like asked unethical questions. Like so you got like any rich uncles? No. I'm not fucking kidding, dude. It was insane.

It was insane. And so they're basically trying to kick you out. But the nursing homes won't take you when they know you have no money and you're on all tax. But the weird twist is if you can get enough cash. to get them into the nursing home, then out of the hospital, Alt-Tex will get approved, and then they can't kick you out while you're getting approved Al-Tex.

You just have to, you have to literally get them into a new facility. How crazy is this? Most people don't fucking know this shit. And, like, I didn't write any of these details in the book because it's like... The policies of the health care system. It's so crazy. It's a quagmar. And in that time, she develops pressure ulcers, which is a scientific term for bed sores.

And a lot of people go, like, what's a bed sore? They would have no idea, but I'm about to tell you that as your parents get older, you're going to become very familiar with pressure ulcers and it's going to break your heart. Because pressure ulcers, bed sores are fundamentally a combination of neglect and the body is breaking down. Because when you can't get up and move, your tissue is not rejuvenating itself on any kind of cellular level. It's not replenishing. And you're laying on your back. And so by the time my mom died, she had a pressure ulcer at the size of a fist in her back. It was literally one of the most heartbreaking, like, gross things.

And eventually we brought her home on hospice, and it was two weeks of doing that. And I'm not going to say more about that. It's funny, this will be the one part that the lawyers have to check. But keep this part in there because I want them to know I'm checking with that. Because we ended up in a really tough situation with some of these hospitals and nursing homes. But I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to say all this. What is your dad doing at this point?

So my dad and I didn't have a very good. relationship. Is he helping with the care at all? No, because my dad is still with Marlowe. And even though I would say that I had gone from not talking to him at all to slowly trying to heal and rebuild the trauma of a whole fucking lifetime, right? I mean, like, there's a lot, There's a lot to go into. And we were in a better place, but we were not close. And I touched on the beginning of this podcast that my dad passed away this year just a few months ago, which was even though I would say that just because a relationship is hard,

doesn't make it easy when they're gone. This has been a very, very hard time of grief with my dad, even though we had a really fucked up relationship, right? And I would say we would spend the next 10 years like being at arms. length trying my dad doing what he could to his credit unlike stephen camp who as his collective fell apart and so many things like came out all these things if anything he became better at gas lighting my dad like to his credit regardless of the fact that many people have said my dad is probably the bad guy in my book in some ways you know um he really tried and and we would do

everything we could to work on that and and heal um but he was never in a position to be close enough to like him and Marlowe really take care of me and my mom. And frankly, I didn't expect that because at this point, we had gone through enough years where I had like tried to X him out of my life, probably from the age of like 22 to 25. At this point when he comes back in my life, my mom, really my wife and my babies are the most important thing. My mom and I have rebuilt a relationship, which kind of has nothing to do with my dad. We had a lot of our own shit to work through. I'm in a better space, but I'm not looking for him to find. I'm not looking for him to bother me in a way. I'm kind of looking for someone who at this time I had like a lot of shit

with rightfully so to kind of like be in my life in a kind way, but don't fuck with me, dude. And that was kind of our relationship for probably the next 15 years until he passed away this year at the age of 40. And we did have some good, we had a lot of good times. And I would say some years that were better than others. But I didn't expect that of him. You know, he wasn't there to like help me deal with the passing of my mom in that way. You're totally right. My wife would have given me the same look you just did, which is I talk like such a traumatized abused kid because she's like, you never really knew there was a third door option,

which is, like, it doesn't have to be that your divorced parents treat you like shit and hate each other. Yeah. They can. I know that that's your experience. Yeah. But it's trauma, it's like sad to hear you say like, yeah, it's not my dad's job to help me where it's like, well, like, it could have been.

Yeah. Right? Like it would have been so permissible if your dad's like, hey, this is my ex-wife. We're not together, but we have a child together, and I'm going to still care for her and also help my son in the process. The look you gave me reminded me where she's like, honey, the secret third door option is not like either they're hunky dory or they hate each other's guts and make you feel constantly like you should hate the part of you that's like the other parent where it's like divorce parents who fuck this up. You don't understand. Like, if you talk bad about your ex-spouse, you are teaching your child to hate the part of them that is like that spouse. Yeah.

And if you're doing that, you should stop doing that. It's like bear the responsibility of like it doesn't matter what you're upset about. Like it's just it you do so much hardwired damage and I was an example of that. And you're right. I've never experienced the secret third door option, which is that they they got a fucking long. You know what I mean? And they did the right thing by their kid, right? And that just wasn't, it was also not a dynamic that was really encouraged in the collective.

And it's funny because as I've gotten older and you hear them talk about it into my, well, my mom died, but I would hear my dad and Marlow talk about it with time, with all kinds of opportunities where I would really tell them how I felt or work on things in therapy, and they would wonder why we weren't close again. And like, no matter how many times I tried to get them to understand, like, the damage they had done. With time, people start to tell themselves a story of like, no, we loved your mom.

Like, we don't, and like, you don't understand. Like, you literally told me that you thought my mom was the one who had sexed. Yeah. Like you, like, but it's funny because I think people have a hard time. And of course, they would apologize for that. And that was one of just the tragic things that went down. But like, it's just hard because I didn't have expectations that it should be any other way. And I love my dad.

And we got into the best space we could. And I love him now. And like, you know, not on the planet. But, yeah, so I'll end it there for now. Yeah. And there's something beautiful about you taking care of your mom in those final, you know, years that in the way that I'm sure she would have loved to have take care of you when you were a kid, right? Like, you kind of get to,

there's a little bit of reciprocity there where it's like you get to be there for her, you know, all the way to the end. Yeah. And you really is. Your wife also plays such a great role in this because, and you touched on this in the book, and I don't want to belabor the point,

but like she, you guys meet each other as literal children, like five years old or whatever. And then she goes away and lives a generally normal-ish life, at least outside of the collective. I mean, again, I don't want to tell her story, but she is living outside of the, the confines of this community

and gets to see the world in a different way. And there's another funny part of the story where you're traveling around for these chest tournaments and you're also seeing the way other kids live and you're like, are you guys flush the toilet afterwards? It's just like, what are you doing? It's like truly like an ET moment. Like you're like an alien going out in the world

realizing that things are not, you know, only what you see. But it seems like your wife really helps kind of tether you to the world and be like, hey, there's other ways to live. She really was, yeah. Keeping you kind of grounded. And at this point in the story, it's like, okay, chess is sort of off the table. You have two kids. Why not just get out?

Like, even especially after your mom passes away, like, why not just get in a car and go? Like, what is keeping you stuck to this place? Yeah. Well, yeah, this is a great thing to dive into because you end with the big question that a lot of people have, not just about my story, but I think about cult dynamics and cult environments in general. but before we even get into that, like it's funny you use the analogy of my wife tethered me to the ground

because we have literally described our relationship as I am a kite and she's the tether. Like she's the steak. Yeah. And she actually likes the analogy both ways because it works mostly in the dynamic of Danny literally travels the world. Literally I'm in the air.

I'm being thrown around by different things I've been through and at every stage of our life that the analogy of me being a kite, a victim to like powerful winds that weren't my fault and different things and her being the tether work. But then also when she's needed it, she's like, but you're so powerful that you, if it wasn't for you, I would have been buried in the ground. She's like, you have been the one who has pulled me up. We've joked that it's like, you know, if it wasn't for me, she wouldn't do exciting things. And if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't enjoy the exciting thing. So that's been our balance, right?

And like, so she really, it really has that. I just wanted to say that because she's, um, she's the of my story in that way. And you touched on it. I'll give people a little bit of background that we have, we have such a weird, a weird lifetime together because, so her story, and it's going to blow people's minds.

My wife's story is that like my mom and dad, Stephen Debbie, before their divorce and everything we've got into, her mom and dad, Kathy and Rick, moved to the collective as well. The only difference is they moved with three of their four babies already born,

but very young. I think my wife was, like four or five when they moved in and like and then she had a little brother, little sister who was like just born. Over the next couple years, what would happen to Rick and Kathy is very similar to what would happen with Steve and Debbie. People came to the collective to save their marriage and in reality it was a fast track

for divorce. Rick would leave Kathy and marry the second daughter of Stephen and Trina. Shelby, the woman who the school was named after. So just letting that sink in. Crazy irony. Crazy irony, right, that Rick would leave Kathy. and marry Shelby. Steve left Debbie and married Marlowe.

The only difference now in the other way is that rather than stick around, Kathy saw the writing on the wall and was like, I'm not going to stay here because at some point they're going to take my kids from me. And who did her wife, who did her daughter, Mary? Literally the poster child for what exactly she was afraid of, right? Crazy story. And like, this is why it's a fucking movie. This is what the producer has told me.

He's like, really, he's like, the focus is like the fact that you and your wife had this crazy relationship. Now, Kathy kind of flees the village, like flees the community in the night. Her and Rick had had their last baby, the youngest daughter, Tessa. So now Kathy moves back with all four of her kids to Chicago. I wouldn't say I knew Shauna or Luke or Julie or Tessa at all. Besides, there were like pictures. I don't really remember.

I had like one really vague memory of maybe at like knowing Shana. But there are like pictures of us together as kids because they were a part of the collective. When I get into chess, I'm traveling the world under the auspices of Stephen Camp. One of the ways you do it when you're a broke-ass kid in a collective or a broke-ass collective in general is you're looking for free places for the kid to stay. So I started staying in Chicago twice a year with the Kerry's family. This is now Kathy's maiden name. And there were two big events in Chicago. There's the Chicago Open, which is always Memorial Day weekend.

And at the time, the U.S. Masters, which now has moved around, I think the U.S. US Masters is now held in Charlotte, was held in Chicago. So I'm staying with them a couple times a year. And Luke is my age, her younger brother. So we're becoming like besties. I'm getting this life at least a couple times a year, not just where I'm exposed to people's life outside the collective, but a family that, like, loves me.

Because Kathy, like, really loves me. And she, by the way, was going through her own shit. As this family change was happening, she's like losing her mind. I would learn later that, I mean, of course, how hard that was for her. She literally saw my name go from Daniel Gordon. I was a top all-American chess player. I think I'm like the only top all-American chess player ever to like change their name, by the way. So I'm like, there's like Chess Life magazine with Danny Gordon, and then I became Danny Wrench.

So this is all happening. So why on earth would she ever move back to the collective? Well, they have their own brutal story of Kathy remarrying, and this guy was, was abusive. And I'm not going to get any of that because, again, it's like, that's my wife's story. And maybe it's told someday or it's not. But if there was one environment that could help get rid of this guy, it was probably the collective environment. And again, this is where the nuances fucked up because one thing about Stephen Camp is like he he had kind of a zero tolerance for like for kind of like the open abuse that was like on the table. And like this ex-husband couldn't make the collective.

Like he couldn't make it. So that ended up being a good thing. But now Sean is back in Arizona. And she and I had gotten to know each other like or. over this time and I really liked her. And I was actually supposed to be like vibrations with another girl in the collective. I was betrothed at a very young age.

To the ballerina. It's a fucked up thing that we've skipped past how young kids were betrothed in the collective and it wasn't good. But this betrothal isn't working out, partly because their family is now kind of at war with Stephen and Trina. So I guess what was so in like vibration

is no longer so if you're demurged, right? So that didn't work out, but it means that like, I like Shauna and this is a very quick version of our love story that people can piece in between what we've already described as me being taken away. I was adolescent living alone in the valley. But eventually she became, as I said, there was a group of people who had either a purpose or they were going to ASU. She's two years older than me. So she was one of the ones who came down to go to ASU. So there's like the chess players, the ballerinas. I had been there longer than anybody, but you had this island of misfit

collective kid toys. And Shawna came down to go to ASU when her family had moved back from the collective because of this abusive situation. And I find the love of my life. And again, in no way. I mean, like I said, like statistically, our marriage shouldn't have made it made it. It was awful. So many aspects of who we were to each other. We were both bringing our pain to the table.

But for me in particular, like, I was just the fact that she stuck it out and like, and did it not just in a way to, you know, to be with someone that she loved. and who she had now had a couple young babies with, but to do it in like the way that she did where not just was she, she was relentless in all the right ways about not running away from my pain, that it's like she was giving the right advice even if we got divorced. Like she cared about me as a person that I had been running away from my mom and from my pain, all this stuff.

And she had the balls to do it. Like she had the balls to do it in the face of like Stephen and Trina and Stephen Marlowe who had like been a part of orchestra. it and been okay with it and like and it was like no matter what they would say with time like telling themselves a new story like my mom had been like demonized by like all of them right and she remembers she said very young age at one point when like me and her were were trying to make our marriage work and we were like under attack by Stephen Marlow and Stephen and Trina different things and they were like they're like Sean is just like Debbie and she's like it's funny because every time they said that I'm

like oh man that's such a compliment like she just like loved my mom mom. Like, she just had the balls to be like, like, this is just so fucked up, right? And they also shared something in common that they were maybe the only two people that truly loved you for you. Yeah. Like everyone else had a condition, right? It was like, well, was he going to chest? Is he doing his purpose? Is he going to help us look good? Yeah. There was only two people it seems like, and again, I don't know the whole story, but that truly were just like, Danny's good enough. Yeah. I've never heard anybody say that. Yeah. I think you're right. I think that was probably it. Like they just had a very, it was unconditional in a, you know what I mean?

And it's funny, I've never heard anybody say that. Yeah. And then, you know, the other thing is she had an accidental, she would say accidental wisdom about her around the good parts of community because, as we described, where she came from. She saw the broken suburban bullshit stuff happening where her, she watched her mom fall. apart and what was happening in their life, I think to some degree, allowed her to help me navigate because if she had come at me hard with let's run away, I would have chosen the collective over her. If she had come up we hard too soon with like Stephen Marlowe were part of the problem. Yes, Stephen and Trina like did the abduction, but they also allowed it. I would have

chosen Stephen Marlowe over her. I could go down the list because like, she it wasn't it wouldn't be even described as savvy like she just understood that like this was a broken hearted abused kid who had stopped loving himself not his abusers and she also understood how the collective works right and so she and like she says it was like an accidental thing that now she can see the you know by the way my wife is um a mental health counselor she's like become a therapist and so it's funny she got into this path of this stuff and in many ways it's like she was that person all long and before she knew it she at first she was a teacher she got you know she taught at the shelby school And there's a whole other book and movie around our years of living in the village,

you know, having our young kids while I'm secretly building chess.com and still, you know, in the heart of an imploding on itself cult. And we get into that. But like, yeah, she had patience where she didn't even realize she did. And she had, I think, perspective, kind of the forest through the trees because of where she had come from. And, yeah, if she had been more like, if she had put the, abused kid in a corner, she would have lost the battle. And so she really found the right way to like help me help myself. You know what I mean? And I think that that was. She also understands the

programming you got. Yeah. Where she's able to kind of see it and like either implicitly or intentionally, just kind of like if I push too hard, he's going to go back in. Yeah. And so it had to be really patient. And then, I mean, just her patience in general is like saintly. But just being willing to kind of let you choose to work it out yourself and then supporting you along the way. Do you have a friend that buys gold instead of crypto because he doesn't trust the internet? That's a power move. You got a buddy that has like a backup generator and a bunch of canned food and somehow knows that a blackout's coming before the power company does.

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work up this chess business, which then accidentally, directly. parles into chess.com. So how does that then all of a sudden connect with Jay and Eric? Yeah. So yeah, we've, and it's I think it's impossible not to do some Tarantinoe because it's a lot, right? So we've bounced around in different in different areas, but the best way to dive into that storyline

on a timeline level is to go back to when I'm in and out under the knife, literally surgeries. Also in and out of bike it in in and pain killers in the beginning of a lot of that stuff. But I couldn't travel. competing, even if I was still delusional, that someday I might get back on the horse,

at least as far as competing with Hikaru and stuff. You know, that wasn't a possibility. But teaching in the local business that Stephen Camp and I and the other chess people had already been doing for a few years became my mainstay because also now I have, I'm in and out of surgeries, but I'm going to get married to Shauna. She's already pregnant. In fact, we delayed the wedding so she could have the baby. Our baby was at our first wedding.

opposite of what most people do in life. They rush it, right? But we, so, you know, all the dark, wild, crazy, you know, turbulence happening. But I'm trying to build this life. And while in and out of surgeries, I can't immediately go from a surgery without a few months of recovery before I can even drive and stuff. It's like that heavy of us thing. It was just wild.

So it was literally like being trapped in your own mind. And there's only so many times you can watch Lord of the Rings on biking and, dude. Like, there's only some times you can, you can, you can. Sounds like a good time. You can watch Harry Potter High. It was a good time. Like, so there's only so much you can do with that. And the, I don't remember, like, in a, almost in a fever dream sense, because I know exactly where I was in the bed where I was when I grabbed a computer, a slow compact laptop, compact, my first laptop.

You always had to have PCs. Mac laptops weren't actually great them before they had the revolution and PCs were all the shell software was. but I remember, I don't remember what caused me to do it, but I grabbed my computer and I was just like chess on chess internet. ICC had existed, which is the internet chess club. And so it wasn't like I was, it wasn't like it was completely novel, right? There was a place to play chess online, but it was only really play and you had to pay just to be a member. So that was like the current ecosystem online, basically something that served the over-the-board chess world in an exclusive online way. I started diving into the internet.

I took the whole Google AdWords course, which is this series of multi-hour videos. I learned all about SEO and all these things. And I remember coming to the epiphany of, oh, I initially, I think, was starting to do it because in taking over the business for Stephen Camp, I knew I wanted a better online presence. And I actually had this idea that I would take one game played in the,

so we're running these over-the-board tournaments on Saturdays, it's called Master Tracks, which is people on a Master Track. I was like, oh, I'll build this online business by taking the best game for the master track while kids submit. I'll analyze it because I'm an international master. I'll put it online and people will pay for that game. This is like the beginning of like chess education business. And I'm thinking I'm a genius, right? And I'm like, so how do I do this?

Like what? How do I do the website thing? We had Americanchest.net, which was just like an online place where people could see our tournament schedule. And so I was like, how am I going to build a chess website that's educational built? and I was diving into this and learning about SEO. I'm like, oh, well, I should probably just get chess.com then. Obviously, it's already taken. What I didn't know is that timeline, like literally 2005,

because my first surgery was 2004. This is when I won high school nationals and my life falls apart. The beginning of 2005 is when I'm mid, like, second, third surgery, and I'm coming to the epiphany of this. Like Eric and I have talked about the cosmic universe. He's literally like at the bankruptcy auction, buying the domain name from this group of VCs who had no idea what they had. And like to realize like we couldn't pinpoint it, but it's like maybe to like the fucking

day or week. It's like crazy how our timelines were like ships in this in the night. So he's got buying the domain. Chess.com is gone. I can't get that. So I bought chesscoaching.com for only 200 bucks, which by the way was like already I think the I can, which is the internet service that sort of governed the domain names like real estate with time.

And that's how premium domains were established. They started realizing because Web 1.0 was like, people were like, you mean I should have a website now? Oh, everything about the internet was a representation of whatever your IRL business was. It was not even thought of as the website is the funnel to the business, let alone the website is the business, right? This is like the early pioneer days of how people understood this shit. And so a lot of domain names that were like very valuable was kind of the Wild West. were coming into very powerful domains that would eventually revolutionize a lot of businesses, put people out of business because of what we were headed.

But that's like a whole other interesting podcast, I think. But so I end up being very educated, buying a couple, more than one premium domain named chesscoaching.com just happened to be the best one. Over the next couple years, massive wars in the collective, marriage is falling apart, abusing alcohol, opioids, like I'm just reminding everybody of what we've talked about. But eventually we get to the end of 2007-8, and I'm playing again. And I go to the Berkeley International in the Bay Area. It was actually at the Berkeley Cheskull, which was like this old kind of condemned building near the Berkeley campus.

And while I'm playing in the Berkeley International, in walk these two guys wearing these ugly looking polos, chest.com. Not like my producer over there who's got a good chess.com polo on. The modern logo, the modern logo is so much sexier. Yes. But they're wearing these ugly. Yeah, they're wearing these ugly polos. but I see the domain name and I'm like double take right I'm like these are the fucking guys these are the guys that hold the key to my destiny right and of course over those two years

I already described how hard it would be in hindsight of course I wasn't going to get this business off the ground but I didn't know that I was like I borrowed money from Shauna's grandpa so now we're like in debt and I paid it to this horrible white label website firm that like built me the worst chess website in the world it was like the worst and then to top it all off right in the middle of getting my relationship with Eric and Jay figured out, and we'll back up a little bit, talk about kind of the rocky start we got off to. I don't know if I even share this part of the book, but I sold my Honda Civic to get a little bit more cash to try to get this website done,

and I was going to be borrowing cars in the village to keep going up and down the mountain to teach lessons. And so I sold my Honda Civic and like put $8,000 down. And this like, their company just like went under. So I'm like $40,000 in debt of money I don't have at 22 slash 22. 2005, but 40,000 is a lot of money. It's a lot of money right now. And remember, I'm an alcoholic at this time. With two kids.

I think you're going on going with like, no wonder I'm also stressed, right? This was just a crazy time. And we just have our second baby, Warner's born in 2008, August 2008. So this is like the writing is on the wall. The shit is hitting the fan. I'm having panic attacks all the time. I'm abusing this stuff, going up and down the mountain trying to teach lessons. And I've been in this contentious back and forth with Eric and Jay to the point where Jay and Jay would tell this story later.

And this is chapter 13 of my book. And you told me last night it's pretty funny. It's a good play because this is the chapter, why is Danny wrench such a fucking asshole? That's literally the name of the chapter. Why is this Danny guy such a fucking asshole? And the reason is like it's really the dark time of I was an asshole in my marriage. this was a statement that Eric actually said to Jay, like, why is Danny such a fucking asshole?

Which is crazy, because at the time he was a very straight-laced Mormon. He no longer is anymore. It has since left the LDS church. But for him, the chapter is funny because it's like, not only is Eric, the straight-laced Mormon saying, why is Danny such a fucking asshole? He doesn't even know the half of me. He doesn't even know how much of an asshole I am, right?

The shit that I'm, the shit I'm dealing with at home. But eventually, and we've often said that Warner, brought Warner brought the clarity of what needed to happen, which, by the way, I'm just going to say this because our world is, our universe is crazy. Today, on the day of us recording this podcast is August 12th is my son's 18th birthday, Warner. Oh, wow. And today, today is, it's just, we were, Sean and I were reflecting that it's been like 18 years since I, like, committed to chess.com. And that was the summer where I basically stopped going back and forth with Eric and just started agreeing to whatever work they could give because it was my one way to stop traveling up and down.

And I started like I would still do some lessons and I packed them all into a couple days, but I started writing mentor courses and doing videos. And I basically committed to doing what they wanted me to do, which was just make content. I was trying to argue for a bigger piece of the company. I was overstating my value. In many ways, they would say this now with all humility. I had a vision that they didn't have yet that maybe in some ways turned out to be right, right? I had a much bigger goal for how this could work. Because what did they thought it would be like MySpace for chess? Yeah, Eric was, Eric owned a number of premium domains at the time, including exercise.com, including karate.com.

Eric was, was in, his intention was to be a serial entrepreneur on the web. And we didn't even know that was going to be a thing, but that was the thing he wanted to do, right? Jay was our first CTO. And Jay's a brilliant mind, brilliant developer. But again, he was, he was kind of brought back into chess by Eric, because they had done. a business when they were together at BYU. Eric had bought a wholesale chess.com and run a little bit of a chess shipping business.

Then he sold that business to put him to put himself through business school at Stanford. So Eric is graduating Stanford Business School. Jay has been sort of begrudgingly brought back into chess. He's like, I don't want to do another chess business with you, but they're there together. In comes this crazy fucking kid

who they don't even know how crazy he is, let alone from a cult, a high school. They don't really know the half of it, but they know that I've got like the type of passion that, you know, know, says that I'm probably on something twist ending I was, right? That's literally what it was. It's a crazy, it's a crazy like three-way marriage there. And, you know, again, it would take a lot of years. And of course, I'll stop in any part of the timeline you want because you're probably with the questions. But, you know, we want to call it 15 accidental success overnight 15 years

later from 2005 slash 7 to the years of 20 to 2022 when the pandemic would hit. The Queen's Gambit show on Netflix would hit. Unfortunately, the cheating scam. candle would hit, you know, we built a multi-billion dollar industry. Like our, you know, we, we went from where we were to the chess world has completely blown up. And it's not just we. There's a lot of people that have contributed to it, but there's, you know, the chess.com, you know, contribution to sort of the chess revolution was kind of made out of that really dark time, or it was born. And then it was just a lot of just craziness until, until eventually outside factors in many ways started like adding zero.

euros onto our industry. And we were kind of right at the right place, right time. And we had a, you know, I think we had a vision and had a lot of thoughts about what chess could be and what it should be in the modern digital media world that turned out we had made a lot of, we had made a lot of smart bets. Because I think regardless of what happened with external factors, what people don't realize is like, when those boom started happening, chess.com was probably, was probably closer to like 40 to maybe 50% market share of chess played.

Like, chess.com basically is chess now. We don't even like to say the market share because it's like, it's an unnecessary flex. But it is like, it didn't have to be that way, but we had made a lot of bets. I think we saw a lot of the direction of the modern internet from a content

perspective, from recognizing your Levi Rosman's early on, your Hikaru's, seeing that chess could be bigger and in some ways, way more accessible and fun. and less intimidating and self-deprecating. And I think when we established the right narrative and the pin place that when the audiences came,

there was kind of only one choice that people wanted. And we were, you know, we were very lucky in that regard. Yeah, I think when people call it a revolution, I'd think that is exactly what it is. Because I, it's difficult, again, I didn't know this until I read about it, but the nature of chess at the time is kind of this old school club where if you wanted to play, you had to like, maybe you were a nerd, maybe you were in the chess club at school,

Maybe you had a dad that liked it. You had to kind of play in person. Maybe you could do like a little bit online, but like in the very like most rudimentary sense. And at this point, chess.com kind of revolutionizes and democratizes chess. Like it kind of opens it up. And then you as sort of a content lead saying like, hey, chess is for everyone. Like if you want to play, you can.

You can play really good people around the world all the time. And just completely blows open the entire thing and really kind of like changes that old guard of like this is a thing for you know a stuffy like Russian cafe where people smoke sigs to just like anyone can play anywhere in the world at any time yeah and it completely changes yeah like would you say overnight it's funny because there's a we were planting all the right seeds the harvest then happens overnight in some weird way right because like the you know at this point the the the commitment I make a around the birth of my, you know, now today, 18 year old son ends up immediately putting me

on this path to start doing the early content that would be content like the chess world had never experienced. Because again, content before was the intellectually elite, like, you know, we revere them and like this and that, but you'll never, they got off on that while the market was small. Or it was like really power learning stuff only. Like there were, there was a lot of chess books and like you could get like complex DVD series and stuff, but, like, the idea of a casual video where some dude is, like, fucking around in an old accent, like, I'm not even a good oxy accent.

I'm just, like, making weird jokes, and, like, we were just having a ton of fun, making rook endings accessible, like, making, you know, yeah, king and pawn endings interesting, and I would, I would cross the line with, like, jokes where Eric and Jay would go, hey, Danny, like, today you made a joke about premature attaculation, and that's when you launch a king's side attack too early. A member wrote in and said that you were making like a pre- a pre-election joke.

And I'm like, yeah? And they're like, you know what? Just do what you're doing? It was like that. I would talk about putting the king on the G spot. Yeah. Which is just a very quick way to castle and put your king on GA. That's funny. And I would just, I would just really, I would push the line. Like, I think the one

time I really got in trouble with Eric is I I did a video, because I'm running all of content. I'm not, I'm shooting first. I'm in the lane of ask for forgiveness. permission but I did a video at one point and the title of the video was called child abuse. But if you clicked on it, it was because I went to a tournament and got abused by a 12-year-old chubby little Asian kid who just destroyed me. And so that I did on Burst, but it had an insane click-through rate. And then people were writing it in hordes. And he was like, Danny, like,

you have to change the title of that because like that's actually, I don't want child abuse as like a part of our brand. I'm like, oh, but it's a really funny title. You don't get it. You don't understand. If you click it's because I was abused by the show. He's like, doesn't matter. You got to take it. So it's funny. I think in all my, I don't even know if Tish here, our video director knows that story. I think that's the one time I crossed the line for Eric and Jay.

But otherwise, like, it was like, hey, like. And then, of course, that was like the early years where a big part of my job was not just to manage other's content, but create it myself. And then eventually it was a pretty big shift to really stepping back and and seeing the opportunity to find Levy, to find Hikaru, the Bote's sisters. and empowering Robert Hess, the chess brought, like exactly, kind of putting myself

in a position where, you know, I became much less of like the person who was making videos and shows, but we were building a creator ecosystem that has, you know, not just led the way as far as now

wherever people find chess, whether it's YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or Twitch, all the most popular influencers. Before that became a word, we were actually using that word. And I'm saying that. I will brag about this a little bit because I've been told that there were like case studies where they bragged about our program because a lot of what the video game industry was doing and the death and birth and rebirth of e-sports. Because e-sports, talk about a vanity metric-driven industry that never figured itself out.

But it was because the biggest lie the publishers ever told was that e-sports matter. They had all these people spending tons of fucking money on e-sports events in esports arena. And they're all presenting it. By the way, I know the twist ending. I've seen the numbers on all those things. not great. Not great, right? Now, there's a current model running,

and we have a partnership with the ESports World Cup that might be the closest thing to a sustainable thing. But before we even get into that, the point is the publishers were benefiting from the e-sports industry and these massive insane rounds of, like, Overwatch and all the crazy crashing leagues. And, like, we never played the game of buying loyalty.

And we never paid the game of, like, overspending because we knew we were serving a product that we didn't even own. Like chess belongs to the world. It's humanity, right? And so we were like, we were building a very symbiotic relationship with our influencer program. We gave them, everyone laughs at affiliate programs early, but we've built like a very successful affiliate program where they're earning real revenue share on all the premium

memberships. Like we attached them to the growth of it. And we then, we did a crazy thing where it goes against all funnel metrics to like, allow your website to become a feeder for a bigger website. Everyone wants to use Facebook and YouTube and Twitch to feed your platform. And once it's there, all conventional wisdom is get them into the membership funnel as fast as possible, convert them, right? Because your whole goal to pay the bills is the subscription business. But we took like a larger gamble, which was there were so many platforms that are bigger than chess.com.

If we can make levy a star on YouTube by giving him embed where now people come to chess.com, we have a powerful domain. name, they see a window of levy doing chess. They click it and leave our site for YouTube. Like when we first did this, there were people at our company like, Danny, you're fucking crazy. Like, this is a bad idea. But it massively paid off because when the big booms happened and there was no way we could have controlled how much traffic was going to come to the game.

Again, from the pandemic, from the Queens Gambit on Netflix, anywhere chess existed, we had helped grow them into stars. Our logo was present. They were endorsing our product and there was no other place for chess. Like literally, I had like 15-year-old friend of my son unironically go like, your dad should make a real game. Like, your dad should make like an IRL game. And like, I don't think he saw what he was saying.

That's so funny. Because he was trying to say make a chess.com one game, but it didn't understand that like we became so quickly synonymous with the brand of the game that it, again, it was not just because of the domain. It was because of a lot of these things. And there were some risks that we had taken that turned out to really pay off. And I would say it was the right risk to take too because we saw what was happening

on these platforms that were bigger than ours because even though the traffic was there and conventional wisdom is do performance marketing, pay for exposure, pay for ads, increase your CTR, the click-through rate, and then convert them. But I was like, first of all, we have no idea what these black box algorithms

are capable of. We're giving Zuckerberg money. He's not giving us shit. The biggest lie you ever told is that Zuckerberg was ever going to let anybody leave Facebook. It literally gave birth to fake news because he's literally created the platform within the platform by telling people, build your Facebook marketplace and pay us to advertise.

He forced people to build their entire webpage on Facebook. They were never going to return traffic because that would hurt their inventory, which by the way is paid by Ford who wants the Ford truck there. And I'm not saying I was like some like genius crystal ball, but I had a pretty good feeling that this was unsustainable. And if we were going to go down the road of paying for performance marketing in a game we didn't own. Like, we didn't have the bottom line to have that kind of bottom line.

And it was also the wrong way to set up the ecosystem, right? So the only way to like compete with this was to take the gamble that as long as chess was growing and our product was the best, we would win. And there are times where we've had to really work hard where I think there's been other chess platforms that have had slightly better product here or a better feature there. That's okay. That's healthy because it drives like competition innovation. but fundamentally we became the best product

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Blue Chew. Let's get back to the show. So the other thing that I'm curious about is your purpose from a young age is to become, you know, the greatest chess master of all time. You don't achieve that goal. But I am curious, are the current great chessmasters, were they using Chess.com at a very early age to accelerate their growth? 100%. Like, when does Magnus go to Chess.com? Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny, because where we sit now in this chess revolution that everybody's played a part of where, you know, we contributed to it. It has, you said revolution. It has just completely changed the game, for lack of a better metaphor,

because there are kids in Argentina from like Norway, I mean, Magnus, like people who would not have had a chance to become a great chess player before without the internet are becoming the best chess players in the world. because if you didn't grow up in either a Soviet chess culture or somewhere where there was a local chess club, maybe with a grandmaster or two hanging around, you just, as we said, in order to play at a high level, you have to play at a high level,

which means you're playing high-level players in order to get to that level. And now kids are growing up with Roger Federer in their backyard with a tennis court. Yeah. Right? And you're getting access to Magnus Carlson playing casual games.

It doesn't matter if it's casual games. It's Magnuskin Carlson playing games all the time on chess. com, right? And so Magnus, Magnus is only a few years younger than me that like when I was 16, he, you know, how young, I think he's five, maybe six years younger than me. So like when I was still better than Magnus as like a prodigy is 16, he's already like, I remember the first time I saw him in like New and Chess magazine at like the age of 10. Wow. Like he was already a very cute little blonde kid like genius Magnus Carlson from Norway. Right. And so yeah, there, there we go. We've got Magnus right there.

Like he was, so he's, yeah, so he's five years younger than me. Okay, so that makes sense, yeah. And so he, so in some ways we are, I'm before him, but we're close enough to the same generation. So he like me grew up with ICC, internet chess club, like Hikaru, which is like, yes, I said the things I did where ICC was not servicing that chess is for everyone like chess. com became, but Magnus, like me at the age 11, I'm 16, was already basically going to become a professional player. So for those who wanted high-level online chess, ICC existed. So he grew up

like me and others playing on the internet chess club. And then it wasn't really until this early two, this early 2000s, or me and my early 20s, when chess.com would really become the major player. Because that's the thing. So we now have a great relationship with Magnus and he's on our site and all the best chess players in the world compete on chess.com. We have a multi-million dollar e-sports ecosystem that again is part of what we would say is a much more sustainable way to look at e-sports because chess is not an e-sport it's also not only an iSport i like to say that for iro chess is the original like bridge it's the original transcending factor between the online world and the iro world because it's the same game in digital space as it is o tb as we say pha and playing

soccer aren't really comparable it's not it's not the same thing right and the reason i i say that is one, it does allow me to toot the game, toot the horn of chess a little bit and just say how lucky I feel like we are to do what we do, because chess really does serve a unique part of whatever the future is of connecting online social worlds that are anything but, but maybe having a chance to reverse engineer them into being social places to connect with IRL communities, because no matter how good you are at League of Legends, you are disconnecting from real life to play that fantasy game. And even the simulations of sports, your FIFA's, your NBA 2K, you are not Wembe, I hate to break it to you. Yeah. Right. I've been next to him.

Dude fucking call. Right. And so like at best you are pretending, right? And chess, no, no, no. Chess is the same game on your phone as it is right in front of us, right? And so if you get really good online, yes, like some people joke that like, you know, it's hard to switch online to over the board. But okay, like a genius like Magnus or our top player is going to be doing both. So they actually have this ability to accelerate growth because they're doing local tournaments and then getting scale against the best players in the world in the tune of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of games against Magnus and Hikaru. So we are literally in the middle of a revolution now, man.

We're like there's this kid who just popped up from Argentina. He's already being called the Messi of chess. We're like he's like the next Magnus. He's a boy genius. and he's his name his name is fastino oro they call him fausty and like and i'm not just trying to put him on a pedestal there are many other super talents there's bodana in the uk and she's we've we haven't seen a player like a young woman like her like since juda polgar like she is absolutely just crazy phenomenal and they're growing up in a world with access to the best and it's the same game

as i r l chess and so i think we're going to be answering or asking questions whether we have the answers or not, like, just how good can someone get at such a young age? We don't know yet because we've never had a game like this. And I'm not saying there aren't, I mean, backgammon is also the same IRA as this. And like, but like, there's a risk element. But chess is special. And yet there's, it's, it's, it's an unknown information. Yes. Chess is a game of complete information. So your commitment to the mastery is kind of the only thing holding you back. And the fact that we've already survived the existential crisis that was AI and that we dealt with the fact that AI were better than humans at chess 30 years ago. And you know what humanity in the chess world did?

We actually proved the world that maybe we still have hope as a species. We made a decision because we all like to use this phrase, but we don't know what we'll really do push come to shove. Chess made a decision that the journey mattered more than the destination. On a cultural level, chess made the decision that just because computers were better than man didn't mean we weren't going to play the game, enjoy the process, and in fact, computers were going to become tools to make us better than we previously were. The machines in chess have allowed chess players to become better versions of themselves. And that's actually like a fascinating thing, I think, if you think about it, and whether we stand a chance in hell to make the right

decisions as a species going forward, I think there is a playbook that suggests we have a chance, because we did make choices to put guardrails on it while still, acknowledging its power. People could say like it's a foregone conclusion, but it really wasn't. When computers were better, we could have decided it wasn't interesting. We could have had ego that why would we do it anymore? We could have had this idea that we should do cyborg all the time, so you're openly cheating. But we didn't. We actually made a decision about what was okay and what wasn't as like a community. We kind of decided that. And we also forced those who were not going to use it to basically reflect that they weren't going to be able to keep up. We actually did the right

balance thing. And if people say that safety can't be a competitive advantage, just talk to Volvo and the seatbelt. Like, I just don't agree that that's not true. I think that if we can get some of the crazy egos governing the world of where we're headed with, with, with AI, which is a larger conversation, I think in some ways, like, it's not the end of the, it's not the end of the world yet, where we fully turn ourselves over to capitalism and the reckless pursuit of RSI, which the recursive self-improvement, and we just decide that it's, I think through our ways for it to make life better, to not kill the creative spark, and to make a decision that the journey can still matter more than the destination. And I really do believe that the chess has a bit of a blueprint

for that. Yeah, I mean, think about like art, right? Like AI might be able to do art better than humans, right, on like a technical level, but we still want to do art. Yeah. And there might be a point where AI could parent my child better than me, but I still want to parent my child. Because at the end of the day, I am not just an efficiency machine trying to become a robot. I'm a human being that is irrational

and emotional and dumb at times, and that's not a flaw. That is what it means to be human. And by pursuing that human element, I think it keeps us pure, even in the face of technology and AI, that could potentially do it better in sort of a literal sense.

Like a statistical sense. Yeah, exactly. It's like there are lies and then there are statistics, right? Yeah. And what makes a human is what you just said, the journey is the thing. It's about being in the journey. It's not about the destination. And so I think that back to your point about the pros of what chess has done for the Magnus Carlson, who grew up with me on ICCC, eventually my playing group would fall apart.

Him and Hikaru become that. Eventually, Chess.com is here. We sort of remerge in the cosmic timeline of now we're all together on chess.com and that's awesome. but the generation that grew up online was almost just the beginning of learning to use the technology. Now we have a generation who was like born into the matrix. That's the Fausties.

Yeah, the Fausties and the others who are just getting so good, so fast, because now they're growing up with Magnus. And because Magnus and Hikaru and those guys got really good and ICC was the beginning. But what was funny is back then, you had a lot of people in the previous generation who didn't play a lot online.

Like there was actually this separation of online chess is bad for your game. was a thing I grew up hearing. Like, you didn't have Gary Kasparov throwing down with late, late drunken blitz sessions. Magnus Carlson throws down with like late drunken blitz sessions, right? And it's like, I'm not endorsing that. I'm pointing out that there's like a connection and just like, rawness, an amazing rawness and like just the joy of that is like now you have a generation who they grew up learning to use the tools, which means the next generation is going to take advantage of them always being accessible. They're born into this. And it's very exciting,

because we don't know where that's going to go. And the fact, like I said, to end my rant, that we have already kind of survived, at least the existential crisis of we're not going to quit playing the game. In fact, we're better at it than ever because of the machines. We put proper guardrails around it. We're dealing with chatting. Cheating.

Sometimes we deal with cheating in explosive, crazy controversies, but we're dealing with it. And I think it's, yeah, it's really interesting to see where it goes because chess sits at a very unique intersection of IRL and online. Yeah. And it may be the case that, Test.com is the reason that there is a new world champion, right? That they are born and this is their only access to chess

and that's their only training. It's the only way that they learn how to play the game. And then maybe by accident and a weird twist of fate that I'm sure you've already connected, your invention and your life has led to the creation of a world champion. Yeah, it's like the purpose thing. And it's like, yeah, like, okay, the purpose was become world champion. You thought it was you.

but then actually it was to make it this other person based off the software you built. It's wild, right? And it'll be funny because if that type of timeline plays out. Which feels inevitable to me. It really feels like it just makes you kind of, it makes you just go like what is, what is purpose besides what you choose, right? And in the end, it's an interesting lesson of what you and I were talking about some last night, that the obstacle is the way. You are not better in spite of. You are not better because you go around.

You are better with the obstacle. In fact, it's literally like quantum entanglement. Like, it's the birth of a new atom that only happens because of the thing, right? The thing that didn't exist before. The anti-fragility is what makes it strong. A hundred percent, right? And so there's, and I think that's what, you know, they talk about, you know, alchemy. And, of course, the alchemist is one of my favorite stories of all time.

And the idea that we all have the ability. to transform our life if we choose to do so is actually, I think, just the most empowering thing for anybody because, like, it's not to say that no matter what you go through, you can get over it. And I'm not in any way trying to dismiss that there aren't those who are truly disadvantaged and hurt by their abusive circumstances. I went through a lot, but there are certainly many that have gone through way harder than me. But what I am saying is that in the end, as long as you're still breathing, you have a choice with the thing you went through, which is just to talk about the thing or to say, like,

what can I learn from it? How can I evolve? What is the opportunity to alchemize to convert something into something magical, right? And the point is, like, yeah, it is meant to be a little bit of like, what a wild twist of fate my life is. You literally couldn't write this or you could, and that's why it's a book. But like, and then we haven't even shared the craziest ending of my story, which when this happened. I want you to know, like, I literally like, the craziest end of my story is that

the person who was the child actor who played Josh Waitskin in the movie searching for Bobby Fisher now works at chess.com. His name is Max, and he's actually become one of my best friends. He lives here in Brooklyn, by the way. Oh, wow. And Max was a child actor, loved chess, eventually went off to, you know, school and politics. He was at Arizona. Airbnb in the early wild days. It ends up full circle back at chess.com. And when he applied to the job and I hopped on the interview, I was nearing the end of writing my book.

So he's only been here now for a couple of years. And I called my editor and I was like, you ready for the ending of the book? And I tell him the story and he's like, get the fuck out. I'm like, can you believe this? I'm like, I just hired the guy who played the actor that got me into chess. and he, and I'm telling you he's a star, I already knew it was going to work out, and Max has been a total star.

Total star, like, it's been an amazing two years to work with him. And so talk about, like, weird things. And if I mentioned that Spirit was speaking a different language that nobody understood or is purpose even real, it doesn't even matter, but, like, there were choices made to go, I'm on a bed, I'm on Vicodin, I can't watch Lord of the Rings anymore. Like, I'm over at Frodo.

You know what I mean? And, like, we start making choices that are, based on you have an opportunity or you don't, right? And again, I think that that is the point of the story because you could also sit there and pop another Vicodin. Anybody can. And the reality is I end up in a spot where chess is my purpose, but with a different purpose for me.

Chess is the purpose that I've chosen because chess gives me purpose. It's a different way that I'm using a game to make the world a better place, right? Chess is good for people. Chess is connecting communities. It transcends all these barriers of just gender and race and language and nationality. and it's just, it is a phenomenal vehicle. It really is for change. And like, I'm not trying to sit here and say that chess can change the world,

but I'm saying that, like, I think that, I think people playing chess and developing critical thinking skills, if anything can't stand up to skepticism, it doesn't deserve to stand. I want more skeptical people. I want more critical thinkers. I want more people who, like, also can choose a game instead of, like, you know, there are things that are worse than that, whether it's mindless, numbing video games or maybe other things.

I don't know. I think chess is just also good and enjoyable. And yeah, I have a really weird sense of purpose now because, like, people ask me and go, like, when is the next thing? When are you done with chess.com? And I'm like, dude, like, the fucking mission is just getting going, dude. And like, that sounds like a weird cult thing to say. But I'm like, hey, like, chess is so good for people. And I have a sense of purpose because of the service the game provides. It's not about me anymore or this idea that I failed to do it. It's about the fact that chess as a service to humanity is an amazing tool. And that part of it really is just beginning for me.

And if it ends up being something that leads to a kid saying, like, I'm literally a world champion because I learned chess on chess.com. Like, that is, that is, statistically it is the likely future. Yeah. You thought you were Harry Potter, but really you were, you were Dumbledore. I was Dumbledore. I got the whole time. I thought I was, darn, you know, I definitely wasn't Frodo.

I'm like merging timeline. And where did we go with the Luke Vader analogy? Yeah. The fact that we were landed on the Luke Vader, the sister Leah awareness. I'm going to have to tell my wife about that, and it might give me a whole new level of therapy talk. I actually found out that the crush on my sister

was a full Luke and Leah story. Exactly. Oh my gosh. And then, I mean, another, I guess, just like tie up is, you know, you're dealing with these cheating scandals. And you have a point in the book where you're like, hey, I publicly sort of, you know, kind of lambat. someone and do a process yeah in in real life in that okay I've kind of left the

colt but the cult hasn't left me yeah like the cold is still alive inside of me and then that you know unfolds into your conversation with with Hans about you know his past you know cheating on the platform yep and he acknowledges it and you know kind of things move on and then this whole scandal with madness explodes and you're once again sort of in that seat now you all are the authority trying to manage this young kid, right? I mean, he's in the hot state sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's a, I mean, he's not a kid. I mean, he's a young man. And trying to navigate his own journey. Yeah. And now the roles are reversed where you are, you know, the person with the power. And the question is like, what are you going to do, right?

Yeah. Like you've become, again, not to, this is maybe an unfair way to frame it, but like in terms of power, like the Stephen Camp character. Yeah. And it's like, okay, he did terrible things to you. And now you're in a position of like, okay, how do I rehabilitate this kid Hans? How do I deal with him?

And not only him, but many other people that are dealing with that same situation. Yeah. Coming up in this chess ecosystem. And it's sort of ironic and destined in a way that against your will, this was put in front of you, almost like the universe saying like, all right, Danny. What are you going to learn? Yeah. What have you learned?

Yeah. What are you going to do now? You're in, you've got the keys. Yeah, that's a great. I'm really taking that in because, like, it's, uh, um, I have, I have lost so many sleepless nights. I have cried so many tears already about what has gone down that the public knows about in the Hans Neiman scandal. And, and, not to mention the private conversations, the desire and wish that like, maybe we, We had taken a different approach that maybe we had been more more patient as things were going down in St. Louis. And then I've heard the other side of the angle, which is people who are like, no, you did right then. You did right by the chess world as far as what was spilling out. And actually, like, the fact that you, like, kept the secrets for so long was the problem.

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. You know, that's like been the other side of it. It was like thinking that I was going to play God and I was going to be the leader who was capable of holding this in and like like i said being a dysfunctional family leader who was keeping the secrets i've had just as many arguments you know from both creators and top players who were like you were handling closed door confessions closed door processes and something that was rotten in denmark was not allowed to be judged by the community and maybe like that's the other angle to look at it right i mean you know

you mentioned the the kid who um we didn't use any pseudonyms in my book besides that kid's name. This isn't Hans Neiman for those who are those who are still with us. Thanks for being with us. It's awesome conversation. But the the cheating scandal that I learned from, but I shared in the book, which was like the cult was still in me, I tried to treat this like a public hot seat process, like the process, really backfired because I saw what abusing my power could look like even when I was right. That was the twist is that the guy cheated. He had already like confessed privately. but I went public first in like a pound my chest kind of way, like put them on the hot seat, and the community like rightfully roasted me, roastedchest.com because it was like,

what are you doing? Like with this like kid and also you're making this claim, but you won't even show us your algorithm. So you're abusing power without even saying fully who's running the community checking account, whatever. You know, it was like, it was really interesting dynamics of just being like, not only did it backfire, but I also felt awful. Once I did it, I had the moral just like, what did I do? Like, I outed this person and the controversy eventually goes away. They, you know, enough people look at the data closely enough to go, well, he probably did cheat.

And also like, you know, but it was the beginning of like seeing what could happen if you, if you handled it that way. and it also was just not in our nature to like not be forgiving. And I did it out of self-protection because it was almost like the higher-ups were mad because they thought, you know, that we were letting cheating go. And like cheating had happened. And so it was almost like I was penalizing this kid on the hot seat to make up for all the other cases that Hikaru and Fabi and others had complained about, right?

And it was just wrong. Like it wasn't the right thing to do. And it did lead to a DNA, a part of our culture where we were very forgiving. we were going to go the extra mile to not ever look the other way, but to hold people accountable with discretion, with forgiveness, almost like the way a proper negotiation happens, like you give people space to feel and be understood, not because you're trying to coax a confession, but because you understand that like literally people aren't perfect. And also the moment you pound a kid and say, did you lie, they go, no, no, no, while the candy's in their mouth. Like, because they're scared of you

more than they are that you just caught them eating candy out of the pantry. Yeah. And like, if you want them to like learn the lesson like ruling with fear and lack of safety is not the right way to do that and so i made my mistake we took a very different approach i believe i will stand by to this day that we did the right thing by 17 year old hans that we we created the space for him to be forgiven and to and to try to turn it around and and i say the word tried because like there has been a perspective that he may have cheated again even after confessing before we even talk about the accusations of whatever people think about his career or other things. And so it's been weird for me because I still stand

by what I did. And I also can, I, you know, I'm not going to speak to that stuff. But like, I can understand why people, if they had doubts, even if I don't think Hans was ever cheating over the board, the people who think I held the secrets and then made that call to not provide any kind of information on a background when no one, you can't prove a negative or a positive in this lane, right? And so I can understand in defending Hans and saying, I don't think he cheated over the board and I think I did the right thing by him, why other people would be upset. Right. But I also can say I understood Magnus's point of view, because as I shared in my book, despite how Netflix framed it, like, I also told Magnus, I didn't think it was a good idea while

acknowledging that the past about his history, the history of him cheating was true, which could lead to Henrik and Magnus being like, all right, well, you're basically saying everyone is suspicious over the board and you're acknowledging the past cheating, but saying you kept it secret. So respectfully, you're telling us not to do this, but aren't you part of the problem, Danny? Aren't you the reason we're here? And so when it did go down, we were like, well, we're now in this position. Let's figure out if he cheated over the board to the best of our ability. Let's investigate.

And so we did do that. And again, we've said this many times where like, and I think Netflix did a horrible job. and an unfair job to us and this, however they wanted to frame us as corporate douchebags or not. I think we've also talked to a lot of people outside of the chess community who've said, you don't look like a corporate douchebag at all. You actually look very kind and whatever. So a lot of people saw what they want to see. But what I didn't like specifically that they did was that we really thought the punchline was going to be,

yeah, we did jump on the investigation because this kid had cheated online way more than he was now, now actively defaming us while claiming we're defaming him. He's actively lying about it while claiming we're not. We don't agree with what Magnus did, but now everyone now denies everybody was coming to us and asking us, not just Magnus. Everybody wanted us to do the thing we said we could do, which is have the best cheat detection in the world. And when we did what they all asked, we didn't give them the answer they wanted, which is that he didn't cheat. So now they all like deny it, but Netflix didn't like pay off. That was the emotional payoff, which is that in the end, if there was a mafia, if there was conspiracy,

you know that no one knew we were writing this report. I tried to tell that to people. How do they not understand that, like, we didn't have to publish the report when we found out that Hans didn't cheat, but we did it anyway. You get what I'm saying? Like, no one ever remembers that angle.

Like, none of you knew we were doing this. We decided to do it, and we thought the punchline was chess.com doesn't have Magnus's back. Chess.com says he didn't cheat over the board, but instead it was run the other way. And I understand that's a little bit duplicate. People are like, well, you did add a lot more fire to the thing by saying how much you cheat online. And we did because we also kind of wanted to clear our name at the time because he was trying to go full little kid Lance Armstrong.

He was trying to do like, I only cheated when it was this and it was two games and they're evil. And it was like, dude, if you're going to like fucking out us and do this, especially after I bent over backwards for you, like, we're actually going to do this. And but in the end, we also didn't say anything untrue. Like so and now he's in a position where like like respectfully to Hans like whenever you know and it's not like he listens to me on these podcasts anymore but like the game that he's playing now like if I need to be the villain for you to raise money for investors and end game AI whatever you got to do man. But now it's now it's like business like he's full of shit to many to many different levels whether he ever tells the full truth of his cheating online or not. We have honored every aspect of our word which is we published a report that didn't even know that we gave our own. word to ourselves we were going to do. We have invited him back to the platform.

There has been no aspect of chess.com doing anything. If we're chess mafia, it's just because we try to tell people behind scenes, hey, I know Hans is difficult to deal with, but you should still invite him. Because I know he's abrasive, and he's kind of an ass,

and he's kind of a punk, but he's good for the game. So if we're doing anything, we're actually secretly encouraging, while also I'm not going to pretend that he wasn't dishonest. And you know what I mean? So it's funny,

the chess world has their own narrative, and I'm kind of like, You know, Reddit is often playing checkers when they think they're playing chess. You know what I mean? Like they don't even know the information. And I think that, you know, it's in Hans's business interest to try to perpetuate whatever it is. I am in no way again dismissing his hardship.

No one saw the A-Bee's thing coming. That was wild and crazy and unfair. And at the same time, like everything that's happened, like he can say what he wants now. But like his profile is massive. He is getting invites now. And like he deserves it. like also like I think he's currently in the process of alchemizing his own pain into something

that could be really special because he's becoming a really good chess player and we'll see how good he can get right and I'm rooting for that I'm legitimately rooting for that and I think that I can hold the opposing truth which is I'm legitimately rooting for Hans to alchemize this experience into something powerful for him and that doesn't mean that you were perfect in the past or that you didn't lie and cheat at different times and I wrote my own book as well I've written my own deliverance as far as the mistakes I made and what I've been able to do. So I'm not going to apologize for that perspective. And people who want to do the chess mafia stuff at this point just basically have their own business interest to do it. And I'm sorry because it is easy to

hate the man because no one likes a market share leader. I get it. I'm the bad guy. Okay. You know what I mean? But like, but it's not for any other reason than probably your own kind of selfish perspective if that's what you think. And that's the end of my current rant on the on the situation with Hans and Magnus. By the way, they're both in Paris right now. So time of this recording, I'm hopping on a plane tomorrow and I'm going to be seeing both of them and it just continues to be a really awkward tension-filled room when they're together. I stand by everything I said, rooting for Hans. I don't think he sheet over the board, but there are people who think I'm wrong.

And that's why Hans is still mad, but he doesn't understand. I'm not perpetuating that. There are people who still think that his rise was inorganic and that in addition to how he behaved and how he continues to sort of represent himself, they feel like something's wrong, and that's kind of on him to deal with. He has ruined his credibility with his peers, and he will have to rebuild that on his way.

And there are people that, you know, once again, think that I'm an evil chess popularist, so the only reason I'm now rooting for Hans is because he's good for the game. But I would say I was doing that the whole time. I'm not an evil chess popularist. I'm trying to popularize the greatest game because it's good for people.

So you can, and I, yes, I have a business interest to do it. How lucky am I? Yeah, right? But, um... I like Hans. Like, I know you do as well, But like I like him for the game. He's a great player.

And he brings this Connor McGregor-esque, like, arrogance and, like, in mystique to a game that is, you know, in many ways, like a little bit buttoned up. And kind of introverted a little bit introverted. He carries. And also, like, he's American. That's awesome. Yeah. Like, he carries this thing that I'm like, I like to see. Like, I will watch him, you know, play games.

If I see a clip of him online, I'm more likely to click that than perhaps, you know, a player that's ranked higher that I don't have any emotional connection to. So I like him for this. And it's also interesting because this part of the story is not done. Yeah. And there's, and there's an element where I'm like, I would love to see a reconciliation at some point, right? Like, you've reconciled with so many people

who have done you wrong in the past, and people have taken you back after you've done them wrong. And I see no reason why that can't happen again. Yeah. And I'm fully open to that, like honestly. Like, I totally understand, like, where I did, Holland's wrong. Like, honestly.

And I think that what I debunked and dismissed, and or would take issue with is that there was ever, it wasn't malicious. There was no conspiracy. We did the best we could in a very explosive situation. And Hans also had kind of put himself in that spot. And so if I did him wrong by launching the Hans and even report investigation and publishing this report that ended up leading to the narrative that he, because even the Wall Street Journal takes blame for this because the headline of the Wall Street Journal,

we gave them the report, but with no editorial control. But that's what you do. when you do big things like this, I've learned you like, you give it to a journalism and they publish it, right? It's like a thing you do. And they published a headline that was chess.com proves grandmaster cheated a hundred times. Didn't clarify online, didn't clarify OTB. And that was a big part of what like led to the lawsuit. And again, we acquired Magnus's company. Magnus did something we didn't agree with. Hans had a bad history. And then I acted in fear. I was afraid. And we disinvited him from an event because I, I was being told by every, whether they all want to be honest about or not, that they all thought he cheated.

And that they didn't think we could, if he could cheat over the board, you can't protect online. So let's investigate and find out. And like, I had the world closing in on me and I didn't have his back. And I mishandled that. Even if, even if I arrive at the same conclusion of I have to, Hans, I need you to step away. We have to figure this out. I could have reached out to him differently. I could have called him.

I could have had a conversation, which was yo bro, you got yourself in a mess in St. Louis, whatever. I didn't do that thing. And I think what people want to like rake me over the coals for, I think it's possible I reach out to Hans. And maybe he's kind of a dick. Like maybe he doesn't want to talk to me, whatever. And I end up feeling forced to do the thing. But I didn't. That's the actually probably of all the things.

That's like the only thing I actually regret is that we had built up enough of a relationship. And I had stood by his back enough. that the way I handled it in hindsight fed his his worry that I was that I was in a Magnus mafia machine and Magnus also has no mafia machine Magnus was also I believe that it's possible to hold all the opposing shoes that I can disagree with Magnus and understand why he did it I already said why the Carlson family feels that way right and so and so if I was to say the only real regret I have on that is that I didn't like take pause I didn't like take a breath and give Hans a chance to like because if I have a conversation with Hans and I have a different perspective about where

he's at and feeling maybe that plays out differently and maybe we even still do a Hans and even report investigation but it's openly with everyone aware we're doing it and we're like guys like we're going to we're going to see what's going on here I don't know right but again I've also I also shared in the book that I don't think Hans I'm taking the road I do because I really care about all personal growth and I'm being honest about what I'm saying I want to always learn from my mistakes. But I've said these things to people and they go, you're also being too hard on yourself because dude, like, he did go on camera and lie and like try to do the Lance Armstrong thing. And also like, he had a track record that put a lot of people in a spot to make everyone nervous. And you

were no longer in a position where like you could serve the game and not deal with what you had covered up three years ago. So again, bro, your mistake was the three years ago. Yeah. And it was the reckoning of you being called to task because you tried to handle a dysfunctional family secret behind closed doors that was like the the collective narrative the process was handled without the community having an opportunity to weigh in and what do i do in this i feel like i'm being i've been ridiculed from all sides of this and so i appreciate being i have a chance to do this i hope everyone on fucking read it like would listen to it and have a brain not that i give a shit but it's like i know that i know that many people don't even want to hear this because they would rather have whatever they've

already decided it's what they want because the truth is the truth was messy and i can acknowledge that i fucked that up but also it wasn't there was no money motivation it was a fear it was it was explosive um we did the best we could with with that with that situation we ultimately i think had integrity ultimately in the end we had integrity by the process oh my god it went explosive no one did the beat's thing. Yes, it led to business growth and Netflix frames us and like, we're laughing about it. We're laughing about it. We also cried.

We also literally cried with them. By the way, these Netflix interviewers, I'm just going to call them out. They're very smart about this. Now I've done now a couple of these documentaries. They put us in this comfortable couch. The director took like a low seat and a high seat. He took us on a journey. Like one day he was talking to me all about my relationship with the cult.

Dude, we filmed with them for like 70 hours. and they put us on there for 15 minutes with like a specific narrative, right? Which again, I understand. But like they got a very honest four-hour conversation with whatever, and they chose your podcast is going to list the whole thing. My book is there. And so that has been hurtful because I don't think many people in the chess community want to know the truth anymore.

They just made up their mind. And so part of me just goes, all right, well, I guess I have to be the villain. Yeah. There you go. Well, it's not done, and I'm, uh, it's not done. I'm curious to see where it goes next. But Danny, this has been awesome. This has been so awesome.

Thank you so much, truly. I, uh, it's a roller coaster and just a whole movie. And, uh, I hope the guy listening enjoyed it. Thank you so much, other. Let's do it again. See it.