Decoding the Gurus - Interview with Elgen Strait on growing up in the Moonies & cultish manipulation

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

This episode is the first of two linked episodes in which we delve into the disturbing world of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church also known as the 'Moonies'.Here in an interview episode we introduce Elgen Strait, host of the Falling Out Podcast which is "a podcast about leaving the Moonies and other cults, as told by the kids who grew up within them." The topic matter is serious and Elgen deftly introduces us to the manipulative cult dynamics he experienced first hand, as well as offering some broader information about how the Moonies craft their public image and raise funds.However, Elgen is a man after our own hearts and his dark sense of humour means that he can also enjoy a laugh at Moon's expense & enlighten us about Absolute Sex(!), a term that might mean something slightly different than you imagine.Our next episode will be guest co-hosted by Elgen as we take an excursion from the contemporary secular gurus and attempt to decode some historical recordings from a bonafide religious cult leader.This episode hopefully provides the foundations to better understand that decoding and we hope you 'enjoy' the discussion with Elgen as much as we did, despite the subject matter!LinksFalling Out PodcastSun Myung Moon: God Bless America Festival (1976) Rare Complete Bicentennial Documentary & We will Stand. Rev. Sun Myung Moon(content for the decoding episode)QAnon Anonymous 160: The Moonies Conquer DC feat Elgen StraitArticle on Trump's appearance at Unification Church linked eventPodcast RecommendationsWhen Diplomacy FailsMonocle 24: Foreign DeskWar on the Rocks

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Music Music Music Music Music Music Hello, welcome to the Coding the Guru podcast. We're an anthropologist and a psychologist listening to the greatest minds the world has to offer. We try our best to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown and with me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh. Some would say the Sam Gamgee to my Frodo. No, not my Frodo. My Elrond. Fuck.

And we're both. You've updated yourself quite dramatically from Frodo to Elrond. I thought, screw it, just go for it. Yeah, why don't you just add to my Gandalf. I'll be Sam Gamgee to your Gandalf. I think Elrrod's even better. But yeah, we're both wearing our big boy podcasting pants and we are ready to get to the bottom of stuff.

Chris, what's going on, mate? Matt's a professor of psychology. I do cognitive anthropology. I moonlight in psychology just for new listeners, Matt. Contextualize. Let them know our expertise, highlight that. Did you mention that? You said we're professors, professors of what Matt? I'm freaking Elrond, man. I'm like a professor of everything. You know,

history of the rings of power and wood magic. That's all within my battle wick. You've preempted something I wanted to mention, Matt, in discourse chat. We're going to have a little segment at the start to talk about contemporary online discourse. But so the one which is prevalent now, we'll get to that, the slap heard around the world. But the other one, I'm wondering, I'm just going to check, the slap heard around the world, but the, uh, the other one I'm, I'm wondering, I'm just going to check Matt. This is a test to see how much of a boomer you are. If I were to mention Elden Ring, would you know what I'm referring to?

Aha. I'm going to surprise you because I have heard of that. That's okay. That's, that's like, uh, a firstperson role-playing fantasy game, isn't it? It's third-person, but you're pretty much there. I did see on Twitter that people, like, it's hard. Like, you know, it's hard to get past some boss or something. It's a Demon's Souls-like game.

This is a thing where people die repeatedly, and that's part of the fun of it so i mentioned it not to go into gaming because i haven't played it i've just noticed that elden ring discourse is a substantial part of my online twitter sphere activity in certain respects. And then another part is the conflict in Ukraine, which is much more serious and impactful on the world, but takes, all attention from all sides of Twitter, as far as I can see, from all sides of the discourse, is the Oscars and Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. It's been absolutely amazing. Amazing to witness the incident itself pales in comparison to the wonderful plethora of takes that can be made and it's it's the perfect incident isn't it it has it all there's something for everybody there so if you're living under a rock and you don't know chris rock made some joke that was sort of

referring to some sort of hair loss and what's his name's wife what's his name will smith will smith's uh rife sort of alluding to that will smith initially seemed to find the joke funny but his wife did not and then then Will Smith stood up on stage and gave him a good hard slap. So it's got it all. It's got, let's see, it's got... You know,

that at the start doesn't sound like it should be something which is... I mean, like, it's a Hollywood event where something dramatic has happened,

violent. So it doesn't immediately strike why this would come to completely dominate the discourse, right? Like Hollywood celebrities get in tussle. So why is it such a cognitive attractor for takes, Matt? What are the elements that are making it attracting? Matt Therese... Let's see if we can enumerate them.

So, so firstly, there's, um, making fun of, uh, is it a disability or a affliction, a disease? That's, that's a big deal. Yes. Yeah. That's one, that's, that's one take that can be made. How bad that is. The second one is of course the violence, right?

Makismo and male violence. Toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity. there we go and a deeper layer is that these were two african-american men and um what on earth could you know white people would not understand this oh there's another one which is comedians comedians being cancelled for making jokes and us all having very thin skins about jokes that's that's four are there any other layers you can think of uh oh yeah there's the the meta contextual one about will smith and his wife having very public agreements as part of their marriage about

agreements as part of their marriage about open relationships but the extent to which they're open is you know it's it's all very non-traditional and a little bit odd though it seems that they have agreements about being able to sleep with other people but they're not necessarily in complete agreement will smith has talked about the appeal of harems and some other guy that his wife was dating was saying that Will Smith gave him permission and that led to conservatives ranting about him being a cuck. So there's that aspect, him defending his wife's honor and the potential contradiction that they have

both publicly besmirched each other's honor in the views of the commentariat. David Pérez- Okay. But all of this is details, mere details. The important thing is, is that this incident has turned out, not surprisingly, to be just the perfect discourse rorschach test for every single opinionator in the world to reveal whatever brain worms were wriggling around in their skull at the present time so it's been like a i described it as a bonfire of the takes which i was quite pleased with because it's just amazing they've been throwing themselves on this incident like brave soldiers onto a live grenade,

making one, exceeding each other in the terribleness of their takes. Bridget Phetasy, and now this is just a limited selection because there's literally an infinite number of them, but some of the good ones I've seen. Bridget Phetasy said that this means that we've reached the inevitable conclusion

of words are violence. So this is a comment on, see, you see, it's woke culture, Chris. And, oh my God, Peter Coffin has bravely taken a shot at Will Smith's wife saying, so Jada is an abusive partner, is what the world just learned. Interesting one. Interesting. Now, look, I'm sure there are so many. Oh, no, this is a good one for a bit of hyperbole. Judd Apatow, he could have killed him. That's pure out of control rage and violence. They've heard a million jokes about them in the last three decades. They are not freshmen in the world of Hollywood and comedy. He lost his mind.

That's good. I like that. There was a variation of that by Emily Porter, MD, that said, just a reminder that if Will Smith had slapped Betty White for a joke she made, however insensitive, she easily could have fallen backward, cracked her skull, and died of a brain bleed. Same with Bob Saget, obviously. Violence is never okay.

I'm team take it back. Yep, yep, yep. Now, Chris, can we read Eric Weinstein's tweet? We have to. Can we please? Eric Weinstein. There are limits to comedy not everything is fake not all masculinity is toxic violence is sometimes the answer i know nothing about

what happened at the oscars but many of my followers disagree with all of the above how i don't know. We just became simplistic. That is, that is just such a still. That's a rare tweet. That's a rare tweet. Yeah. That's the essence. This is what I mean by it being a Rorschach test. Like that's the essence of Eric right there.

Can I give you Coleman Hughes? I think this one is a pretty culture brain pilled one. There are people who think a single slap is too severe a punishment for an offensive joke. But in other contexts, insist that getting social media mobbed and fired is just the right amount of punishment. Yep. I love it.

I love it. In fact, I read like a third, people will be questioning the way I choose to spend my time, but I read a 20 tweet thread about how this illustrated like different types of class cultures and how, you know, middle-class people don't understand the kind of honor culture that's involved and what motivated the slap and how that's very important. So it sort of delved into this deep take about victim culture and honor culture um it was uh it was a deep deep cut and we're no better man

we are no better because we are we are like in the we're not like meta connoisseurs of the the commentary it takes so we're like the only way to win in this environment is not to play. It's not to play. I know you, I like, I still think, you know, if you're going to do something and you're not going to escape this discourse, I hope it's just a wave that crashes over and disappears in a day or two. Hopefully that's the trajectory. Um, but in, in that case, your best thing is to just surf the discourse.

We've there, you don't need to, you don't need to add to it. There's too many flavors for you to sample. Just, just surf it, surf it along the top. And there's things which haven't come yet, which are definitely coming. So Matt mentioned when I introduced him to this, that there will be the introduced them to this, that there will be the tweet archeology or career archeologists who now need to dig for everything that Will Smith has previously said to find where he has made an offensive joke and was not slapped. That's coming.

So is deeper dives on Will Smith's somewhat eccentric children, his son Jaden in particular, with various grilled tea previous declarations of being a vampire. He's definitely going to enter the discourse. So it's all coming. And I, for one, am here for it. I'm planting my flag in the sand right now that the archaeology will commence. Will Smith will be revealed to be hypocrite which is of course the worst possible thing one can be yeah um and lots of fun will be

had by everyone look my theory is is that it's um serving a vital psychological function which is a relief from reality because most people like true you i know and me too have been ruminating on the terrible things that are happening in places like Mariupol. And even though it is kind of obscene that the discourse on violence is focusing on a slap at the Academy Awards rather than dead bodies in the street in Mariupol, perhaps psychologically people just need to spin their wheels for a little while. Yeah, I think that's probably part of it, to be honest. And to escape from Will Smith discourse, however, temporarily. We did have some recommendations for podcasts this week, which relate more to the Ukraine crisis than they do to Will Smith,

which is good. to the Ukraine crisis than they do to Will Smith, which is good. And I've just, I've seen so many, so many terrible culture war pilled brain takes on the conflict in Ukraine. And as a result, it's just refreshing to find coverage that is not engaging in the worst part of Twitter excesses or culture war takes. And for those purposes, there is a podcast you recommended to me, Matt, called When Diplomacy Fails. Now, this podcast, I should emphasize, is not actually focused on the conflict in Ukraine.

It just had one episode where it discussed it, but it was very refreshing because it essentially, to me, offered a very sensible and historically informed take about the conflict. But it's not doing a deep dive on that topic. It's more focused on European history and World War I and the 16th and 17th century. And it's really well researched. It's an Irish guy that adds a big benefit to it. And it's just these massive in-depth historical dives on historical conflicts when democracy has failed, as the title suggests. And it's one of those cases where it makes it clear that most of the narratives that you receive about history are far too shallow.

And if you actually want to get into events, they're messy. There's tons of stuff going on. And it's good. So if you like hardcore history, I think you would find this podcast revealing. And obviously, Russia features heavily in world war one and world war two so it helps contextualize events and the historical conflicts and so on so there is aspect that aspect to it so yeah hardly recommend that yep when diplomacy fails very good and yeah the other podcast i want to recommend i've I've only heard like four episodes of this.

It's called War on the Rocks. It was running a long time before the Ukrainian thing, but obviously has tended to focus on it. It's like a military type strategic podcast. to, they have very realistic expert guests on who give a unvarnished and pretty, pretty clear picture updates essentially on how things are progressing over there and I found that quite informative. It's not, it's not encouraging one particular view or another. It's more a realistic description of this is what's happening. So that's useful as well.

War on the rocks. description of this is what's happening so that's useful as well war on the rocks yeah and and last matt i'll just mention that i came across it was actually a recommendation on when diplomacy fails called monocle 24 it it has coverage of the ukraine conflict and I find it informative and non-hyperbolic and, you know, pretty straightforward, but in-depth coverage of what's going on. So those are three podcasts that maybe, or if your choice is to consume that or the dark horse or Jordan Peterson's, let's start, but maybe, maybe you should choose the former rather than the latter. Agreed, agreed. Yeah, so I listened to that too.

Monocle 24, the foreign desk. It's got good, just more news-oriented, but detailed updates. It's got a bad name, though. It sounds like an aristocratic elite. It's not a good name, Monocle 24, but it is good content. cat, it sounds like an aristocratic, like elite. It's not a, not a good name, Monocle24, but it is good content. So just don't let the name put you off. David Pérez- No, not at all.

Not at all. So, what's next? Henry Suryawirawan, So we have today an interview with a guest who is, this is actually the introduction because later this week, we're going to have the second part, which is a joint decoding, with the current guest who is Elgin Street from the Falling Out podcast. So this interview will kind of introduce Elgin, what he does, what his podcast is about, and will serve also as another introduction. I can't think of another word.

I'm just going to repeat introduction for the second part, which will be a decoding episode that we do with Elgin as a guest host, looking at some content from Reverend Moon of the Moonies, the Unification Church. Yeah. So another historical decoding, decoding of a historical figure who, not so much a secular guru, but certainly a guru. Yeah. So we haven't done that many of them.

I guess really only Anthony DeMello and Carl Sagan are the previous two who fall into this category, but this is a guru guru, so it's, it's useful for calibrating our guru metric insights. But before that, let's introduce you to Elgin. Okay. So we have with us now Elgin Street from the Falling Out podcast. So welcome, Elgin. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm a fan

of your show. And it's great to be here. Thank you. Yeah, the feeling is reciprocal. And actually, I think I became aware of your show when you appeared on QAnon Anonymous, and they had the extended episode with you. And they had just before that covered the group who I always forget. I think when we spoke last time, I asked you the name as well, but the offshoot of the name. Yeah, they go by a couple of different names. One of them is Sanctuary Church. One of them is the Rod Byron Ministries.

They probably go by a few other ones, quite honestly. That's a recurring theme is the ever-changing carousel of names for these things. But those are some of the names that they go by. Yeah. And for our listeners, we'll have talked about this in the intro, but the Falling Out podcast is a podcast about leaving the Moonies, the guest cult group and other cults as focusing on people, primarily children who grew up within the movements

and particularly the Moonies. But I think this season you're expanding to look at other cults. I'm starting to, yeah, I'm starting to cast my gaze there. I speak the language of the Moonies for better or for worse. So that's what I'm familiar with. There are a lot of similarities.

And when you talk to people who've left cults, a lot of the reasons they leave is just listening to other people who left other cults and they can spot the similarity. So there's a lot of learnings to be shared. I just haven't quite gotten there yet because I'm just really been focused on shedding light on the corruption and abuse and hypocrisy of the environment that we all grew up in. Yeah, I have to say that the podcast involves interviews with other non-adults who grew up in the Moonies. And some of the episodes are quite tough, but it's a really interesting resource. And Elgin, the normal thing that people, when they're interviewing people, is ask at the start about

who you are and what you do. And I suspect a lot of people will have heard of the Moonies and have a vague idea, but probably similar to me, there'll be a lot of details they're not clear on. So could you introduce the podcast and who the Moonies are as well for people who don't know. Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk about the Moonies first and then I'll talk about the show. So the Moonies is a cult. Obviously, they don't like it if you call them that, but that is the case and they are one of the most infamous ones. They were founded by a guy, unsurprisingly, with the last name Moon, Sun Myung Moon. He was born in North Korea in 1920. And

he claims he had a revelation one day that effectively was a message from God telling him that some quite heretical things, quite honestly, in the grand scheme of like Christianity, basically saying that, God, where do I even begin with this? But okay. Two core tenets. One of them is that effectively Jesus failed in his mission and Jesus was meant to marry and have a family. And therefore, because Jesus was crucified, he failed in his mission. The entire course of human history had been building up

to including like massive wars and movements of people and stuff like that. All that was building up to you'll never guess the so-called providential conditions to be met to be set for the messiah to be born in korea and you'll never guess who god told moon should be the messiah surprise surprise it was him and yeah so i think he was 16 when that happened he claims he had a revelation that god told him he was the messiah basically and as part of that i think and this ties into the theology behind the whole thing is it's a bizarre mix of extremely puritanical beliefs on sex combined with an extremely sort of like graphic fixation on sex by the whole leader and i guess

what i mean by that is all human suffering was caused by Adam and Eve having sex with each other when they weren't supposed to. And actually, just to drill into that a little bit, technically, it was actually Eve having sex with Satan and then having sex with Adam. That's a wrinkle, slightly. I hadn't heard of it before. It doesn't surprise us you haven't heard of that. And so effectively, all of human suffering started from that moment of these people having sex when they weren't meant to. And according to church theology, when Moon eventually achieved his position as so-called Messiah, he was able to change the sinful blood lineage of people and therefore by virtue of my

parents both being members of his church and having their blood lineage change according to him I have special magical blood that makes me a so called pure sinless second generation moonie. What about Chris for instance? How's his blood?

It would be tainted. It would for sure be tainted according to the for sure be tainted. According to the Moonies. That's accurate. I can confirm. But however, there's levels of taintedness. Technically, I now would have more tainted blood than Chris would or Matt would because I left and I broke my, later I can tell you about it,

but I had an arranged marriage within the cult. I left that arranged marriage within the cult. I left that arranged marriage. And by virtue of leaving that arranged marriage, technically, I have like the worst blood in the world. And I will be going to a worse place. If Moon is to be believed, I will be going to a worse place in hell than Satan or Hitler for my sins. They're pretty bad guys. That seems slightly unfair. Should we really be having you on as a guest on our show? Okay. So, no, they don't like most cubs.

They don't like it when people leave. Let me add another quick explanatory question. When I was doing some reading about the moonies to prepare, it reminded me a lot of the Mormon church or the church of Jesus Christ of Lent. In the sense of being that new kind of offshoot of Christianity and having that founder who got the divine mission and a lot of crazy. Very similar. Yeah.

Like Joseph Smith in the mormons like he claims he went up a mountain one day and came down and found some tablets that told him that he was the messiah and then when you ask him to show you the tablets he's like oh well i i don't know i can't what i don't have them uh you know whatever surprise surprise yeah it's the same thing i think so south park sort of educated the world about the mons with that episode. I'll have to do an episode on the unification. I would love it. I would love it. But I want to go back to like, yes, technically it's a religious cult.

That's sort of that's where its foundations are. And as a result, it enjoys religious protections, as many religions and cults do. But it abuses those protections massively, insanely. And so I guess to give you some context there, I mean, this is an organization with hundreds of front groups that, you know, they shut down, but they come back in different forms. And it's really hard to keep track of. It's like a hydra. You chop off one head and then 10 more appear. But it's all effectively funded by labor trafficking. It's funded by people who are coerced into living in vans, going around selling trinkets,

being convinced that spiritually they will be rewarded if they are good fundraisers going out and selling trinkets on the side of the road or doing various other door-to-door sales type of things. They're still sending teenagers out now on these vans around the country in the US. They were sending them out during the COVID pandemic. That didn't stop them. There are kids who have died as a result of doing this sort of work. A girl in 2001, an 18-year-old girl, was raped and murdered. We talk about that on my show.

I haven't mentioned her name on the show, but there are new sources out there that I can refer people to if anyone's interested. This is not a harmless religion. This is a place that exploits people tremendously. And people have died. There are other kids who have died as a result of the exploitation. And the entire environment is incredibly, incredibly abusive. And that's something that I'm trying to expose on my show. And one thing that I've noticed on the show over time, to be honest, when I first started, I didn't really know what I was doing.

I didn't know what the final sort of output would be and it's still changing, but it feels like what it is, is painting this cumulative picture of all these people who are in an organization that intentionally tries to hide the truth. It puts up walls and makes people scared to talk about what's happening to them and how they feel about what's happening to them. And by just allowing people to talk about what happened to them, you're painting this huge picture. And all of a sudden people can see beyond the silos and they're like, holy shit,

huge picture and all of a sudden people can see beyond the silos and they're like, holy shit, I was suffering in silence and I thought it was just me, but actually no, the whole thing, the whole thing is corrupt and abusive. And that's what you can do by bringing these stories to light. So over time, that's what I hope the impact of the show will be. I will say Eldon from listening to show, that it does two things simultaneously that I think are important. So one is, in some sense, it's a little bit like listening in on therapy for people because you're making sense of experiences that you've went through and having these quite raw discussions with people who are processing what happened to them and also discussing parallels

or things that were different that were experienced. And I think that's really valuable. But for someone like me or other listeners who aren't familiar with the details and basically don't know what it's like to grow up in that kind of environment. It gives insight into what people go through and basically the damage that can be done to people over the course of a lifetime. And you can imagine that people, and I'm not saying that this response

is unjustified, but you can imagine that a lot of people find when they hear details about the Moonies, like kind of funny or unbelievable because it's the same thing as when you hear some of the claims about Joseph Campbell looking into the hat and reading the things. I think it's legitimate to point out what they are, but I think your podcast is really important as a resource to show the impact that the Moonies had and has on people. And also basically just to give people an insight onto the impact that growing up in a cult environment can have on people. And I remember thinking when I came across your podcast that I had previously been interested in Stefan Molyneux and his community, not as a follower, just to be clear, but as an internet figure. And I found a forum, which no longer exists, unfortunately, which was from ex-members talking about their experiences joining his online cult and reading their accounts. It was all online. It was very eye-opening to me. So I felt the parallel there to, okay, this gives you an insight into what people have gone through. So yeah, I think your

podcast definitely succeeds on those fronts. And I know it's awkward when people, it's people to the face, but I think you're doing something very valuable. So yeah, it achieves what you're setting out, at least from my perspective. Yeah. Thank you. And I guess for me, the best thing is like, I know people have left the cult as a result of listening. I've kind of lost count of the number of people who have contacted me and say, Hey, thank you so much. I've left now as a result of listening to the show. That's the most gratifying thing in the world. And recently I learned of, I think, two cases where it was parents with young kids who were now leaving. So by them leaving, they're going to get the next half of their life back.

But they're also giving their kids their entire life back away from this cold. So that has been extremely gratifying to hear that. And it makes me want to keep doing, I'm doing something right. I'm not professional, but something's working. So I just want to keep doing it. Just before it goes out of my head, you mentioned in your description there about people being sent out to sell trinkets and, or doing like door-to-door sales yeah and that the parallel that immediately struck me there is the structure of multi-level marketing so is getting unpaid labor from members at the foundational i know like you don't have access to the the financial

reports but is that the main kind of financial support for the group, unpaid labor from members? That's a great question. That is a massive layer of financial support, but there are many others as well. There is a massive grift that they have going on in Japan. It's been going on for decades now, and they actually went to court, I think it was in the mid-90s, where they would effectively go door to door. I mean, it's still at the end of the day, it's, it's a bit of door to door, but the way that they're selling is they would find like widows who had recently lost a spouse and they would go to them and say, oh my God, I'm like,

I'm currently channeling your, your husband from the spirit world. And he's telling me that you need to pay $50,000 for this little statue to go in your house so that he can be in a good place in heaven. And they would go. And unfortunately, people were susceptible to this sort of coercion. So they would sell these little probably $10 trinkets to people for $50,000 under extreme levels of coercion and manipulation. And I think at the time, I'll need to go back and look at this, but I think it was estimated they were making about $300 million a year doing that. And this was in the 90s. So that's just one, they effectively traffic in marriages. So they hold these mass wedding ceremonies in principle to, according to them, to spread the blessing of Reverend Moon's lineage. But they're also making

a shit ton of money out of those. So they're getting a few thousand people together. Those few thousand people are all coerced into paying a couple thousand bucks per person as a fee for this wedding. So they're making a few million just in a single day off of that. There are many, many, many, many grifts. They're also massive in the sushi business. I don't know if you saw recently, but the New York Times recently did an article about how Reverend Moon in the 70s more or less created the market for sushi in the US and later in most Western countries. So let me drill into that and I'll tell you what it's built on. So there's a company in the US now, it's called True World Foods. They supply about 90% of the sushi in the US and a large portion

in Europe. So if you're eating sushi anywhere in those countries, chances are the money is going to the Moonies in some capacity. And that business was started primarily by Japanese church members who were brought to the U.S. in the 70s and 80s. And the way that they were brought there was specifically by Moon doing mass weddings and marrying them to Americans and other Westerners. So all of a sudden he created this conduit whereby he could basically circumvent labor laws by just marrying people and then all of a sudden get them a visa. So he just imported a mass workforce from Japan to start with. And then he paid those people bullshit basically for years. So there are stories from that sushi business over the course of decades where they would have two sets of books,

one set of books for the church members that work there and one set of books for the non-church members. So there are two sets of payments. Church members were paid far less and yeah, they were just exploited massively and that business still persists to this day. Yes. Yeah. Well, it reminds me of a lot of organized crime, really, which has its primary methods of illegal, coercive income raising, but then can transition into legitimate, innovative commerce businesses as well. And I guess the other parallel, of course, is with Scientology,

which again, people will be more familiar with and the methods of coercion and persuasion. And even people usually refer to it obviously as brainwashing. So I guess what I'm really interested in from our point of view is these methods of persuasion that they use. Now, these methods of persuasion that they use. Now, L. Ron Hubbard was famously charismatic, and it kind of started with him. But what about Sun Yung Moon? Was he particularly charismatic? That's what people say. But I've seen videos of him, but I've also been in the same room as him multiple times. And so I think he started out being charismatic. I think he had to be to pull off what is the con of the century, in my opinion. But over time, I think he was probably in his 70s and 80s when I was old enough to be aware that he was who he claimed he was. I think he

was getting a bit old and senile, and he just seemed like a raving lunatic but the interesting thing was for me is sitting in a room of us sort of second generation people as well as first generation people in a room with moon and you could almost see um basically all the first generation people these are people who had personally drunk the kool-aid themselves so they had for whatever reason decided that this guy was their messiah they had fallen prey to his manipulation and his supposed charisma and they're looking at the same person that all of us people who never made that choice were but were just told that this guy is the guy and the the looks on everyone's faces are badly different like the parents are completely enraptured by this guy and all the kids are looking around like, what the fuck? This guy is nuts.

So that memory always comes back to me. It's like being in the room and just, I don't know, some people swallowed the pill and they just, once you swallow it, you can't get out of that mindset or it's very difficult. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

I guess in any case, within an organization that large, most of the persuasion doesn't depend on the leader themselves, at least after the initial stage. It depends on the methods that are used to get new members and to ensure that existing members are indoctrinated properly and follow the line. So yeah, I read about something called this love bombing, and maybe you could tell us the kinds of ways in which they would persuade people to be true believers. Yeah, well, so I'll tell you what I know, and this is almost kind of secondhand because I was born into it.

I can tell you a little bit about that, but let's start at the beginning, which is how people become members to begin with. So it typically starts with someone being approached at a college campus. Like most cults, they tend to target people who are young, who are in transitionary periods in their lives when they are more susceptible to this sort of thing. That's common across pretty much all cults. The way it starts is usually a member of the opposite sex will come up to you. It tends to be pretty highly, I don't know the exact number, but something like, they've done studies on this, like people who join cults, most of them,

the first point of contact is a member of the opposite sex. And there's something in that like just innate sort of sexual tension of someone walking up to you on the side of the road and striking up a conversation with you that lets people's guard down and makes them just a little bit more susceptible in that first instance. Yeah. Yeah. Usually starts like that. And someone will invite you to, I don't know, an event with something like almost like impossible to disagree with. Like we're going to hold a world peace and culture event at our communal house. Okay. Sounds, sounds interesting. We're going to

hold a cultural night. Like you should come to a dinner at our, at our cultural night. And that's kind of what it seems like. And you go there and there might have some people playing some music and you might have a potluck or a barbecue or something like that. And it just seems like a bunch of nice young people hanging out, you know, singing songs and stuff like that. I'm very kind of like Kumbaya type of experience. And that's where the love bombing starts, right? Like you're there and you all of a sudden you feel like, oh, wow, you know, you're seeing the songs. People are probably like holding hands, putting their arms around each other, just sort of feeling. It might seem strange to you, but you are feeling this like love and affection of people who are strangers at that point.

That's how it starts. You let your guard down and then they say, OK, oh, we're actually holding a workshop this weekend. Why don't you come to our offsite place? So sometimes it's like it's a two-day event. Sometimes it's a three-day. Sometimes it's a seven-day. It just depends on the setup. But they will then try and get you away from wherever you are to some sort of secluded place.

So they had a big ranch out in California outside San Francisco back in the day. They had a lot of places. And they'll take you there and you will be cut off from your friends and your family. And they will start again with the love bonding. It'll be a lot of kumbayas, a lot of let's go play some games, you know, barbecues, that sort of stuff. Looks like a lot of fun and games. And it looks like summer camp for adults basically is kind of the way it starts. And again, there's a lot of love in that environment. But you end up in this isolated place, and then the love bombing continues.

It still feels like an adult summer camp, but they start saying, oh, we're going to have these lectures. And the lectures are, I should also say, you're not sleeping a lot in these environments. Sometimes diet is controlled as well. So they're kind of systematically wearing you down a little. They're wearing you down with the love bombing, but also they're wearing down your core human systems, your diet starting to suffer, your sleep is starting to suffer. And then they start giving you lectures. The first lecture of the Moon's book is called The Divine Principle. First lecture is called The Principle of Creation. It starts pretty innocuously, quite honestly, in the grand scheme of of things especially in the grand scheme of everything that we've

talked about but it starts there and then it starts adding more and more and more um and lectures get more and more intense and it all kind of leads to a build-up um again you're you're in this environment where your systems are being broken down. People are bombarding you with love endorphins, basically. And in that environment, after breaking you down over a number of days, there's kind of like the big reveal, which is mood is the Messiah. obviously I haven't been in that scenario myself, but that's where people either stay or go at that moment. I hope, I'm sure some people left when they got to that point in the program, but a lot of people stayed, as I said, clearly my parents stayed, many other people stayed. And then at that point, I mean, I've heard stories of people as soon as they basically, they get to that point and then they're asked, like, do you want to commit your life to Reverend Moon and to God's providence?

And some of these people a week ago, they were on their college campus. And now in the last week, they've gone through what I've just described. And someone is saying, do you want to commit your life to Reverend Moon? Some of them will say yes. And they'll be encouraged to sign a piece of paper to say so. I think there's an important contrast there. And this is part of, Eldon, we'd be interested to talk to you in general, I think could talk to you for hours just about your experiences. But the contrast between what you're describing, and the level of buy-in that is required for the secular gurus that we cover, this seems like an important distinction, because what you're talking about is a requirement of an increasing level of commitment and getting more

deeply involved. Whereas for a lot of the people that we cover, you know, it varies, depends on the person, but that model isn't there, right? They don't demand very much just your attention and perhaps your like Patreon support. But I think that might be an interesting distinction that's common to the difference between the kind of people that we are covering and maybe the contemporary and historic cult movements. Mooney to listen to is like, you know, you guys come at this from an academic perspective and, you know, when you're talking about X guest, you'll basically point out like, you know, these are the logical missteps that this person is making. There's an ad hominem attack. Like what, okay. Like even just knowing what that is, a lot of movies probably wouldn't even know what that meant. And so I feel like actually having a background in the sort of thinking that you guys

do. And actually I love just taking the piss out of people. And if anyone needs to have the piss taken out of them, it's Moon, as well as all the other guys that you've taken on. I just, I like the idea of just trying to like take the guy down a peg. And the way that you guys do it, I just think is really interesting for people from my background. He may not have that sort of academic approach, but I do feel like it's actually very valuable. And if people would spend a little bit of time there, they might learn something and those things might help them to spot the similarities between Moon and some of these other gurus

and then maybe be like, oh, I should change something about my life. So I guess all I just say, I feel like there are a lot of similarities and that's what kind of led me to think that we should connect. Yeah. Well, a lot of the things you described about the of led me to think that we should connect yeah well a lot of the things you described about the indoctrination process for the moonies is uh classic coercive persuasion classic brainwashing techniques the stuff you described the that sort of controlling the social and physical environment so that there's like nothing else and gradually wearing

people down and the restricting sleep of course like so that whole total like you talked about it being a totalizing or a total type of thing that's so it's totalizing in every respect isn't it it's like there's no time for anything else there is no dissent like everyone around you is 100% on board and it takes advantage of the fact that we are social creatures right and we are all strongly influenced by our our social environment so if you can control that environment given enough time you can control the person matt you're here voluntarily that's all i just want to make that clear to everyone i i you're drawing parallels that's slightly too strong i i did note some of the similarities because it is very early in the

morning and chris does kept me up late last night and um i don't think i have any social life anymore what's going on yeah that's all i'm sure sung young moon said this this interview has been a mistake we yeah he loved telling people how much he was suffering on their behalf. That was his thing. He would tell them how like, he said he only slept like three hours a night for decades, basically. Yeah. Like that sort of thing.

Oh, that sounds like Chris. No, no. Matt, before you tried to paint me as a burgeoning sunburned, the person on this podcast who often mentions their suffering for their art who has endured six hours of joe rogan lest we forget it's not me so yeah there's plenty plenty of blame to go right all right okay so back on the point um did you want to jump in there elgin oh no so i actually just wanted to you see chris you said something about about mlm earlier multiple level marketing and the similarities so i was was indoctrinated in the Unification Church

throughout my entire childhood. I'm going to come back to that in a second, but specifically on MLM. So I kind of mentally left when I was around 18. So I was still in college. And when I was in college, a friend of mine had joined an MLM and invited me like the MLM event. And so I went there, have you guys ever been to one of these things? No. Okay. So I went there and they've basically, you know, they're trying to pitch you to become a member of the MLM and they have all these like success stories that they're pitching. And then it all kind of builds up to when they're like their top producer is going to come and give a motivational speech. And everyone is talking about it.

Everyone's like, oh man, Mr. X is going to come. It's going to be great. Can't wait to see him. And I see the looks on these people's faces. And I'm like, I know that look. I know I have seen that before. And then when Mr. X, I forget his name because this was a long time ago, but when he trots out and the music starts blaring and he gets on stage and everyone starts clapping

completely enthralled by him, it's the same thing. The alarm bells were ringing in my head and I was like, no, I've seen this all before. This is identical. The type of adoration that people have for this guy is the same. It's the exact same thing that the Moonies have. That's really interesting because you can think about it in a way about people who are survivors of cults that they've built up an immune system that recognizes when there's the potential danger. And I think that's part of the reason why, you know, your podcast is very useful in that respect for people who haven't gone through that experience and can parasitically get

some of the insight. But I was thinking, Elgin, about the point that you made a bit earlier about this kind of trajectory of charisma, right? That like maybe in the early stages, being this charismatic figure is quite important. But after you've amassed your following you don't need to try so hard and there's lots of people i can think of that fit that like sylvia brown i don't know if you know her she was like a psychic person who communicates with the dead in america and became very famous for going on the opera or that kind of thing

and apparently was once quite a proficient cold reader. So throwing out questions and getting the audience to give her details. Right. And then she'll say, oh, I hear, you know, I hear a T and get the people to elicit the information for you. As she got older, she just was like famously short and she went on TV and there were parents trying to look for the missing child. And she was just like, the kid's dead. He's in pain.

And it turned out the kid was not there. This is why it became a famous case, but like she didn't need to be charismatic in a way. She just threw out very straight things. And that point about in the gurus that we look at when I see Jordan Peterson, for example, now he's become quite belligerent. And especially with the trucker convoy in a way that I think if he'd emerged like that, people wouldn't have had such a degree of tolerance for him. And you on the QAnon anonymous episode, there were some extracts played from a

talk that Moon gave about ultimate sex, perfect sex? Absolute sex. Absolutely. Absolute sex. Get it right, Chris. Get it right, Chris. It's called absolute sex. Yeah, I would like to ask you to explain that. But I also want to mention that when I listened to it,

apart from the insanity of what was saying, it sounded just like not charismatic, incited in a you know lecturing tone and stuff and there wasn't much of an attempt to draw people and it was just somebody just talking about what is ultimate no way absolute sex uh yeah and in a way as if like they don't really need to convince people they're just going to tell you the way it is yeah i know what you and i almost i would almost describe it as as hostility in his approach there like it was almost so i guess number one i was in the room when that when that speech happened in in washington dc uh so and that

was one of those moments when i was looking around like what the what the is this what what is happening here ma do you know what absolute sex is just out of curiosity um i i've read references to this but i i certainly never experienced it and i'm not entirely sure what it is yeah that's that's what i thought are you are you asking me to to enlighten you? Yeah, what are some tips? Yeah, it's basically so Moon, he had this. Oh, God, how do you even describe it? So it's his view of the antithesis of so-called free sex or free love, which he had a lot of disdain for. So I think he had a lot of disdain for anything that wasn't completely like heteronormative monogamy,

basically, because of his view that something outside of that caused the downfall of humanity. I'm sure it will not surprise you to hear that against that backdrop. This is a guy who was sleeping with all the women, had many different wives, many illegitimate children, all this sort of stuff. Not going to shock anyone to hear that. But on paper, he was all about one man, one woman for your whole life, basically. And in his view, like that was this sort of, I don't even, it might even have even been like a translation error or something that just couldn't even been translated from Korean correctly because it just sounds kind of weird in English. But almost like the idea of this is the purest, most like closest to God type of experience you could have is this like one man, one wife. If you've been married and blessed by Reverend Moon, basically, it's meant to like elevate your sexual experience to the next level.

As someone who has had so-called absolute sex and so-called free sex, I can tell you that there's no goddamn difference. Surprise, surprise. I do think, you know, that it sounds like if he had hired you simply to do a proofread, because, you know, pure sex sounds much closer to the concept than absolute sex, sex with which you're you're advocating like a tantric approach that you know will your sexual prowess to the next level so absolute sex i i definitely have not experienced that yeah it's also this was in his waning days when i think he was going crazy i actually i i look back on that tape and i almost feel like he just really, he kind of didn't even give a toss.

He just, he was like, I'm just going to go out and scream at these people and whatever. I don't, I don't really care. He'd kind of, he'd kind of done everything he needed to do at that point. And I think almost,

almost like, you know how sometimes movie stars, they, they get like, they don't even like their fans. They can be kind of belligerent towards their fans. It kind of felt like that at that point in his so-called career. I'm thinking about Marlon Brando when you mentioned that, but that kind of anger, and I did want to mention this as well. So it's good that you brought it up that,

I did want to mention this as well. So it's good that you brought it up that, you know, the Washington Times, I think a lot of people, including myself, like know that that is a right wing outlet. We're not aware that it was connected with the Moonies. And I also on the QAnon anonymous episode that was dealing with the Aaron Rod Ministries Church, the thing that might have surprised some people if they listened to that episode is this is quite an unusual group. It's got people with bullet paraphernalia all around. Bullet crowns.

Yeah. It's quite crazy looking. But the thing that was notable was that you had Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, I think was briefly skyping in. So Donald Trump didn't speak. So there's been a split in the Moonies between one of Moon's sons and Moon's widow, along with actually, I mean, technically it's kind of split in three. There's another son who through a series of shady legal maneuvers, actually stole all the assets, including the sushi business and a bunch of real estate that they own. It's some real kind of Game of Thrones stuff has happened there. But yeah, so Bannon has spoken at the Rod of Iron events.

Trump spoke at a mainline Mooney event in January of last year. And I think he's in line to speak at another one this year. And I guess I want to shed some light on this because this is something that's been happening for decades. And the way it works is, so the Moon Empire, which is a criminal organization in my view, they will host these events around the world with, hosted by organizations with names like the International Federation for World Peace or the Universal Peace Federation or the Women's Federation for World Peace, the Summit Council for World Peace. There's tons and tons of names and they always come up with new ones, but they're all relatively innocent sounding events. And they will then invite big name speakers to these events and pay them a speaking fee.

In many cases, the speakers don't actually even know who it's organized by. And sometimes they find out ahead of time and they pull out. Sometimes they find out ahead of time and they just kind of phone in the performance once they figured out what's going on. That actually famously happened with Bill Cosby in the 90s. I was at that speech as well. So Bill Cosby was semi conned into speaking at this thing and he didn't really know what was happening. But once he figured it out, he gave a really shitty performance, basically, but he still collected the fee. But this is what's happening. So, OK, that happened with Bill Cosby. It happens with all kinds of people, but it's happening now with Trump, happened with Mike Pence. It happened with Mike Pompeo. It also happened with

Dr. Sarah Gilbert, the inventor of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. Juan Manuel Barroso, the former chairman of the European Council, who's also chairman of Goldman Sachs right now. All of these people have in the last 18 months spoken at one of these events. They've taken money, All of these people have in the last 18 months spoken at one of these events. They've taken money, which is built on the backs of kids dying during labor trafficking runs for speaking at these events. And maybe you just think like, fine, that's what political grift is. But what's happening off the back of that is the Moonies are then telling all their members. They're like, look, the world is now accepting moon as accepting the legitimacy of moon. Look, we got Pence at our, at our event. Trump is speaking

at our, at our event. Trump is actually a Mooney at his core. He just can't come out and say, but he's one of us. So all of these people who have any clout who speak at these events, that clout is being used to perpetuate this cycle of abuse. And that's a dynamic I don't think a lot of people are aware of, but that's been happening for decades. I remember that happening in the 80s when I was a kid and they were doing these events. There's two just quick things, Elgin, and then I know Matt has a question for you. So what you're describing is also what Scientology does, right? It does have Scientology branded organizations, but it has like Citizens Commission on Human Rights,

the Way to Happiness, Foundational International, Narconon, that's a terrible name, International, but same kind of idea. And the olive parallel that came to mind was that the secular gurus we look at are always trying to bolster their credentials by speaking to experts,

speaking to people in the elite position. So there's this desire to link themselves to just be in discussion and be a player in the room. So, you know, I think that dynamic is similar. And Matt, sorry, I probably leapt in and sent you off on a tangent, but I think you had something you wanted to ask. Well, I was going to make a similar comment. That parallel that the gurus crave legitimacy. That's generally the one thing that they do truly lack and they desperately want it.

And I think that's also true of these new churches or cults and so on. new churches or cults and so on because what they really want to do is to tell their followers or tell prospective new recruits that they have privileged access to the truth and and they do that obviously as much as possible by conveying absolute certainty in conveying their beliefs to you you know i'm sure you can tell us that a lot of the specific things that they are promoting, their ideas, are incoherent, illogical, nonsense. Absolutely. Absolute sex is completely rationally watertight.

That's right. It can only be obtained with very expensive chemicals. Sorry, yeah. Yeah, but I guess one thing we all know is that if you say something completely absurd with utter, utter know, most of our gurus, what they don't have is the full-on brutalizing worldview. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

And, you know, they don't have this like army of people. Well, some of them might, but not necessarily with the same sort of infrastructure that the Moonies do, the same level of organization that the Moonies do. Yeah. So they may lack that, but it is similar. I should say one of the reasons that I started the show, and it's not the only reason, there are many reasons, but whenever Trump started his rise to power in the US before he became president, but when he started his political ascendancy, those alarm bells started ringing. The same alarm bells that were ringing in that MLM place many years earlier, they started ringing when I saw Trump. I want to stop what he was saying, the way he was saying it and how people were reacting to it. It was like, I've seen this before. And that became a common rallying cry amongst us, former second generation Moonies. A lot of us started talking about it like this is this is the same thing and yeah like they operate in the same mode and i think part of it is that like

well as you said that that undying certainty certainty of knowing that you're right and just being able to say whatever you want and say it with such conviction that no matter how ludicrous it is that someone's gonna to believe you and that's the same just same with moon it's the same with trump and same with a lot of gurus that you talk about i'm sure yeah i was i was working towards the same point actually which is that conceding that these full-on calls have taken it to like it's the full treatment and it's 100 percent but that that doesn't mean that one can't see some of the same elements along a spectrum.

And, you know, people call it cultishness in order to convey that idea of a spectrum. And I refer people to our previous interview we've done with Amanda Montel, who's got a good book called Cultish. So basically I'm just totally agreeing with you that you can see some of the same elements um let's just take trump as an example because he's well known yeah there's you know total certainty a lack of concern with with you know truth or internal consistency or things being coherent it doesn't really matter really building up an alternative worldview

which is sort of divergent from the rest of society, and you're kind of in or you're out. And obviously MAGA leading on to QAnon, some people do go along that road. I don't think it's as totalizing as the kind of thing that you unfortunately experienced, but it's on the same spectrum. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that comes to mind there is, so it's well documented that people who leave cults are more susceptible to joining another cult later than the average person. And it's, long story short, it's because they've been conditioned to want a certain amount of structure in their life and want the certain things that the cult provides. And then when they leave, some people are still craving that and so the unfortunate reality for a lot of people who have left is that some of them get sucked back into other things that are maybe not as destructive but still quite destructive so like it's a very common especially amongst our parents generation a lot of them are like full-on

trump cuban on anti-vax they've drunk all that kool-aid used another cult terminology term um but there's a pretty like well-defined pipeline that you can see of of people adopting those viewpoints even some some will stay in the moonies and then add those on top but even some who leave the moonies they end up just getting sucked into that world view amongst other destructive world views. That leads to a question I had for you, Elgin, about the reception of what you're doing, how it's received by current members or other second generation people that are still in the movement. Because I can't help but think about and I don't know a huge amount about this topic. So I'm going on a very superficial impression.

But for instance, with second generation Scientology people like I know Beck and some other famous performers were born in Scientology and some of them have come out critical of the organization, but I would say the more common thing is essentially to be defensive and to say that, okay, well, look, people are raised Christian, people are raised Buddhist or Muslim, and this is just a different expression of religion. So you shouldn't be like, you know, it's stigmatizing to present it as this is an exploitive cult because I just grew up around my parents doing services or whatever. And other people have religions that do the same thing. So I'm curious about your thoughts about whether you've experienced that kind of response from

people and more generally how your efforts have been received by people within the Moonies. And I imagine in your case that you have family members and a lifetime's network of connections. And does that disappear when you do the kind of thing that you're doing? Or do you still have contact with people that are members? That's a lot of questions, but I'm curious. So, okay. Okay.

I'm actually want to start with the beginning of that thread where you talked about the apologist viewpoint that it was just kind of a normal thing. It wasn't that bad. To be honest, I actually had that viewpoint for a long time. So I intellectually left when I was 18. I ended up accepting an arranged marriage because there was so much pressure to do it. And that marriage lasted for 15 years. And it wasn't a bad experience all in all, the marriage, but we ended up parting ways about four or five years ago now. But something about that experience of then... So that marriage at the end of the day was

still like part of the foundation of that was the cult. And so even though I felt like it wasn't that bad, it was just kind of this sort of kooky thing. But at the end of the day, it was controlling the biggest relationship of my life. And somehow in that moment of getting divorced, that was the first time that I felt like I could actually look back with crystal clear eyes and not have anything colored by my experiences or the pressures that I felt to keep the marriage together, et cetera. And so all of a sudden I could look back and be like, what the hell was that? Why did I do that? what the hell was that? Why did I do that? Why did I give the first half of my life to this

thing, this bullshit, basically? And I couldn't really do that without the clarity of, I couldn't look at it honestly without the clarity of the marriage dissolving. So all that is to say that there was a very clear moment in time when my perspective shifted massively. And in that moment, that's when I started reading books about other cults and taking courses. Eventually that led me to doing the podcast. But during that process, one particular thing really stood out to me. And we haven't really talked a lot about the sort of indoctrination that we underwent when we were kids. But suffice it to say, there was a lot of it in various formats. And for a long time, I felt like it was kind of like, well, the parents were just trying to do their best for the kids. They didn't really know what they were doing, but their hearts were in

the right place. That was a perspective that I had for a long time. And then going back to this idea of looking at other cults and how they might relate to yours or the way I was thinking, I read a book. I actually couldn't even finish the book because it was quite disturbing to me personally, but I read enough of it and it was written by two sisters who had left the Children of God cult, which is a notorious, notorious cult. And in that book, they talk about a moment in the history of that cult where the leadership basically recognizes that all the parents joined and had these intense conversion experiences. Now we have all these kids, they're growing up,

they're hitting their teenage year. If we don't do something to incite those same conversion experiences in them, they are going to leave. And as a result of that, thus began in the children of God, a concerted top-down indoctrination program that encompassed my entire life and that's that's fucked up so i'm sorry like like and and i'm here to push back against that and expose that and again so this all happened me so i went from that apologist view to the fuck these guys view um um, through that, through that, through that journey. Like I'm going to burn their fucking house down if I can through that journey. And that's where I am. I'm firmly in that camp. If you, if you haven't picked up on that, um, yeah, that vibe is there. And I, I think right on,

but so I, I threw so many questions. You, but you answered the first part. And the second part that I was curious about was the reception of what you're doing, given that you are in a burn it down mode. How is that? I guess I've received that well in the apologist kind of stance. But so, you know what? You know what is absolutely hilarious is I have heard nothing. It's actually kind of disappointing. Zero hate mail at all.

Like just, just nothing. Complete silence from them. No one has said anything. A couple of things have happened. Apparently, I've heard through the grapevine that the Unification Church is now specifically instructing people, instructing members not to listen to my podcast, which is great because that's just going to make more people listen to it. from existing members was a single like Facebook comment where someone had posted on Facebook, like a link to my, to my show and put some comments on it. I'm not reactive on Facebook, but this, this happened and I was like tagged in it. And I started looking at the comments that were there. And, um, so a member said, Oh, I just feel so sad for this guy that he felt so angry that he had to do this and he must

be in a really depressed and lonely part of his life. And they also said no good can come of this. That was specifically what they said. And so I wrote back. I avoided the part where they tried to impugn my mental state. But I specifically replied back, like, look, like, can we just talk about some of the positive things that have happened here? Like multiple people have left an abusive environment that was terrible for them. Something else that's happened is therapists who are treating second generation Moonies are now listening to the show so that they can better understand the people that they're treating, which is a huge win for me. I mean, to think that, you know, the show would be used in that

context is amazing. So I put that in there as well. Like, hey, licensed, trained mental health professionals are using the show to provide better care to their patients who are in desperate need of it. That would appear to be a positive outcome as opposed to a negative outcome. And that's all I've heard from the existing membership. So barely anything, which again, slightly disappointed by not getting any hate mail. So Elgin, you mentioned that one of the things you like is pricking the hot air balloon of the mystique and the authority of this kind of thing and you know taking the piss and as an Australian I'm all in favor of that especially with gurus as well so

I'm just wondering what other methods of de-persuasion if you like have you come across or are you trying to implement like how would you you know I think about this a lot like when you're talking to someone who's anti-vax, something like that, in many ways you are running up against the same issues that you'd be running up against. Yeah, absolutely. And actually, I have to say, so unfortunately for me, one of my family members has been a staunch anti-vax person for a long time. tried to engage them in a dialogue about the evidence that would support their viewpoint that has not been met well by by them as i'm sure would is not going to surprise you but their responses were identical to what we heard from people in the cult so things like oh you wouldn't understand this because you just don't have the right perspective. So I wouldn't expect you to understand this. And I actually pointed it out to this person and said, by the way, what you're saying right now is exactly what people would say when they were leaving the cult that we both know

we were in before. That was not met positively either. So it's a real struggle, to be honest. It's a real struggle. And in a sense, I know it takes a lot of patience. And the literature about the people who have actually been able to successfully, repeatedly remove people from cults, it's all about empathy and patience and trying to understand where they're at to relate to them about the things that matter to them. I find that very hard to do. It's difficult, especially when you're having an infuriating conversation full of circular logic. And when you point that out, it's just, it's, you get gaslit into being told that you're the bad guy. All of those conversations for me tend to end up in that end point. You're the bad guy for attacking my point of view here. And yeah, almost all the conversations,

not just anti-vax, but like current moonies, all this stuff, like if it gets to that point, then I become the bad guy for challenging things effectively. I think that's part of why what you're doing with the podcast is valuable because you put the conversations on and it's not all doom and gloom, right? You guys have fun as much.

Yeah. It's a barrel of laughs all the time, but like you, you do joke about things and have a dark sense of humor about it, which I can appreciate. I know Matt would as well. And I, I think in some respect by you putting the content up there in a podcast, it means that people can reach it when they're ready and, and that's a, that's a valuable thing, you know, if you know that resource is available, so I'm just putting a vote for, you know, don't necessarily be disheartened if you

have to deal with a lot of similar such conversations, because as I'm sure you know, Elgin, I think those things can have like knock on effect, even if it's not immediate. Yeah. And I think podcasting is a perfect method, perfect medium for this, because as you say, like I haven't asked anyone to listen to my show. I you know I publish it I put it out there obviously I do promotion here and there but I've never asked a church member to listen to it it's just it's out there for people to find when they want it I'm not gonna push it in their faces you kind of need to be ready for it if you're starting to question things coming from an environment like that so Elton you know the format of our

show we'd like to find some content yeah some audio video content and sort of analyze the shit out of it i'm just wondering like i mean but these cults are often quite secretive and things have behind closed doors are you aware of published material that will one might analyze yes absolutely absolutely i can think of a few very choice historical documents that are available in full video and audio glory uh yes there are many that the beauty of you know some cults especially this one is they like to document them as much as they can so first of all there's a website that has like pretty much every word Moon ever spoke over the course of 70 years of doing whatever he did. But there's also a lot of videos on YouTube. So yes, I can recommend.

Elgin, you and I have talked offline about this, but I think it's a good time to mention to the listeners that this conversation, there's probably a lot more that we would both want to ask you about your experiences and also the parallels and lack of parallels when it comes to some of the stuff that we cover in the Secular Gurus. But we plan to do another episode, assuming that you are still willing,

but after interacting with us. I'm willing, yeah, absolutely. Where we do that, we look at some content that you recommend of Reverend Moon and approach it in the same way with you on this as a co-host.

So yeah, just to say this has been extremely interesting. I could go on asking you a ton of questions, but unfortunately, my kids will wake up and start screaming soon. It's all right.

It's okay. So yeah, thanks very much for coming on. And we'll be very happy to have you back on and analyze the man who had a trouble. I can't wait. I can't wait. I cannot wait for him to get treatment from you guys. So thank you for the opportunity for this conversation. But thank you in advance for the conversation, for the opportunity for this conversation, but thank

you in advance for the conversation, for the opportunity for the piss take in the future. So thank you very much. Yeah, that'd be really good. And look, congratulations, Eldridge, for getting that podcast out there. It sounds super helpful to me to just have guests on that have exited in the same way you did and sharing your experiences. I know that these things often persist through shame and secrecy and all of these things. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. So well done you. Thank you. And yeah, looking forward to the decoding. You'll have to help us. It'll be good. Amazing. Amazing.

Sounds good. Great. Thanks guys. Yeah. So we'll put all the links in the show notes as we usually do, but the podcast is the falling out podcast and can be found at all the usual podcasting internet places. So it's been a pleasure, Elgin, and we'll continue the conversation next time. Thank you.

Okay, Matt. So that was Elgin. What did you think? Oh, so good. I think the guys had a tough ride. I remember when we were talking to Elgin, I was thinking about how that is a tough break

to be born into a situation like that. Essentially being born into a cult. You didn't make any decision in your life that led you there. You just grew up in it and you have to then figure out what to do and figure out how to get out, which Elgin has done. So all power to him and well done. Yeah, agreed. And he's pretty admirably managed to dig himself out of that situation.

So well done to Elgin. And I'm glad that he's making the resource that he is with his podcast available for current members and also for people that, you know, have interest in the dynamics of exploitative cults and the damage that they can do. So, yeah. Yeah, I think that's the best possible. If you're thinking about reaching out to people that might be in one of those situations

and maybe ambivalent or on the fence or confused or whatever, then hearing from someone like Elgin is like a thousand times better than hearing from a pair of sarcastic commentators from the outside like us. So, yeah, I think it could be really helpful to real people out there. Yeah.

Unlike our podcast. Not really. Um, as we'll see, as we move to the review of reviews. So I've got some this week, Matt, but again, I'm going to start with the negative and take us up from there. But the negative review, I'm aware of who this person is, so it's kind of cheating because I know it is the partner of someone that is forced to listen to the podcast. So this skewers their perspective. All right. So just bear that in mind. We've been foisted upon them. They're an unwilling listener that consent was not obtained. That's what you're saying.

Correct. This is Annabelle1425 in Australia, Australia, and it's three out of five stars it says gossip magazine for postdocs decoding the gurus is just tmz for nerds oh where's the lie uh i think i just gotta take that on the chin that's that's fair you might you might infer from that the the status of the person who is forcing their significant other to to listen to episodes but there we are we probably remind this person of all the annoying things about their partner but just amped up like maybe three or four times so we're probably you know we might be attracting an unfair amount of what do you think what's going on should we analyze their relationship no yeah what does it say about her

partner that he would do that what kind of monster so so yeah jack if you're listening, stop doing that. You know, why don't you watch TMZ? Wear a pair of headphones, mate. Don't inflict this on your partner. Yeah. So that's one opinion. And here we have a positive opinion. But, well, you'll see it's a, it's an interesting one.

So more interesting than a gorilla condominium, five stars. And this is from NFI Bujin. Sadly, despite the lengthy episodes, they do tend to skim the surface of some of the more important thinkers of our time. For example, rather than devote several episodes to the wisdom of Scott Adams, they only listened to and discussed a small sample of his work. It was the same with that philosophical savant, Joe Rogan, who only received a trifling discussion.

They really should spend more time on people like Rogan and Adams who have so much to offer the world. I sincerely considered withdrawing my Patreon subscription in favor of a gorilla sanctuary, but in the end, I remembered I can't listen to gorillas talk and the theme music is at least original. I love it. You know, for a couple of moments there, I was wondering whether it was in jest or not, but eventually. They turned it at the end. They pulled it out. So your questions were answered. Money well spent, mate. Screw those gorillas. Yeah, yeah. Somebody who listens too much to Matt. So the next thing that we need to do, Matt, just before we finish, is that we need to say thank you to our patrons, our lovely contributors.

And you promised people that you were going to declare your undying love for them, each individually. Isn't that correct? I did make that statement. Yes. You did. Yeah. So, so how am I going to do this? Am I going to tell you the names?

Or are you just going to say, as I say each of the names? I think I'm going to do a deadpan, you know, deadpan just with my eyes locked with yours and I'm going to say, I love you every time. Okay. Or I could riff on it. We'll see. I'm not sure. We'll see how you feel.

Okay. So we're starting with our galaxy brain gurus for this week. And that is Karen Urquhart. Karen, just lashings of sweet syrupy love just being flung in your direction. Love you so much. Magnus Glarum. Magnus, I love you.

It's not weird at all. I do. And Tim Morris. Tim's not weird at all. I do. And Tim Morris. Tim Morris. So much love. But don't worry. It's platonic. It's pure. It's a beautiful thing. Thank you.

And last for our Galaxy Brain Gurus this week, Ryan Walsh. Ryan, the Earth is not big enough to contain the amount of love that I feel for you. Thank you. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Revolutionary geniuses, Matt. I'm tapped out. I can't. I've got memoirs to give, right? One week. One week. You've got to keep it going. I don't have the clips ready.

So this might be a segment that only lasts for this week, but this is the special thing that you're getting. So revolutionary geniuses. Johanna. Joe, I love you so much. Like if I could adopt you, I would. Even if I had to exchange one of my own children in order to have you in my family, I would do it.

That's creepy, but good. Kenya McCray. Kenya, Kenya. Um, Kenya, I'm running out of ways to express my love, but just know that it's, it's deep undying and very, very real. It's, it's, it's beyond words. In fact, how much do you love hamad sandwich ham hamad sandwich i don't sure if that's a real name but you know

it's likely not but do you love it well well i love ham sandwiches like ham with cheese and some pickles that's that's a great sandwich. My God, I love those sandwiches. I would do anything for it to have a sandwich like that. That's close enough. Anders Hayskill. How much do you love him? Anders, I actually love you more than all those other people that I talked about.

In fact, the love I feel for them pales in comparison to how much I love you for being a Patreon. That's pretty good. And last is Patricia Sesse. Patricia Sesse. I feel like even though we've never met, the love that we share through this special relationship of having the podcast and you being a Patreon is eternal. It goes beyond, you goes beyond normal everyday relationships

and it's entered a transcendent realm and I'm just grateful for it. Pretty good, Matt. Now last, you've got the conspiracy hypothesis. I'm not going to give you that many. I'll just give you a tier store, but I'm enjoying this. This is easier, you're right. So, Matthew, you've got a maf you matthew matthew um just just matthew it's a bit generic isn't it but

there's nothing generic about my feelings for you i mean they're uh i mean like i love a lot of like i love a lot of things. Like I love, you know, lying in bed, drinking coffee and playing on Twitter, but it just doesn't compare to the relationship we have. That's true. That's good. Cat Barnet. Oh, sorry.

Cat Barret. Cat Barret. Cat Barret. I mean, I just hope one day we can meet and then we won't say anything. We'll just stare into each other's eyes and just spiritually commune. One day that day will come. Sue Sutton? Sue Sutton.

Sue, Sue, Sue. I'm running out of material, Sue. Um, so I'm just gonna, I just going to express my love through gentle humming. Can you feel those vibrations? Those vibrations, I'm sending them out to you. And the last one, possibly forever. Forever. Phil Richardson.

Phil Richardson. Phil Richardson. I mean, how I feel about Phil, Phil Richardson, Phil Richardson. Phil Richardson. I mean, how I feel about Phil, it's not just love. It's more than that. It's respect. It's admiration. You know, it's just, you know, I, I see what he's accomplished. Um, and you know, just, I just respect the goddamn hell out of it, Chris.

That's just, just man to man in a in a very brotherly, platonic way. I get that. I get that. Me too. Me too. I feel that for all of them. So all of you, all of you. How do you feel about them, Chris?

Chris, would you like to put into words maybe your feelings? You know, you're probably brimming. No, you did a good enough job. I appreciate them. Matt. That's all. So, so yeah.

Thank you all for contributing. And if other people want to, they, they can go on the page on and they can do that. And all the places that they could find us, if they were so inclined, we're on Twitter at guruspod or I'm at C underscore Kavna. Matt is at R4CDent. We are on Instagram and Facebook. We post things there occasionally. We have a subreddit, which just is decoding the gurus and a Discord and commemorative mugs and t-shirts.

And we don't have any of those things, but maybe somebody will make them. All that doesn't matter. The only one thing you've got to remember is follow Arthur C. Dirt on Twitter and like all my tweets. That's right. That's true.

That's the one thing. That's the action point. That's the call to action. Call to action. Like and retweet. Yeah. So next will be the episode with Elgin looking

at Reverend Moon. And see if that blew forward too. Until then, go grovel at the feet of your muscle master. No, I'm going to grovel at the feet of all of those beautiful, beautiful Patreons. Mmm. Grovel.

Very nice. Thank you.