Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Neil Gaiman

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Very rarely does a culty news topic compel us to the mic as urgently as this week’s subject, a nerdy literature fandom turned…collective traumatic experience? In the wake of a bombshell Vulture exposé that straight-up reads like a Sounds Like A Cult script, Reese and Amanda are unpacking the nightmarish tale of multi-bestselling-author-turned-sex-abuser-slash-cult-leader, Neil Gaiman. You know this guy’s work, even if you don’t recognize his name, and the cult he created has so many entry points, if you are a lover of Coraline, American Gods, The Dresden Dolls, or a variety of viral Tumblr DM reply screenshots from @neil-gaiman, there’s a chance you’ve skirted the edge of a few of them. We, along with the rest of the online book-nerd world, were flabbergasted by the release of Lila Shapiro’s article “There is No Safe Word” revealing that underneath Gaiman’s seemingly wholesome dynamic with his doting fans was a campaign of lovebombing, sexual assault, and bizarre rituals, involving the author’s ex-wife Amanda Palmer and a history with the freaking church of Scientology. It’s truly a heartbreaking, stranger-than-fiction story. Join Amanda and Reese, as they analyze it chapter by chapter         P.S. While we for the most part try to keep things fairly lighthearted here at SLAC, this week’s episode is obviously covering a genuinely dangerous individual, and therefore some very sensitive topics. This is a content warning to maybe skip this week’s episode if the following are especially uncomfortable territory for you: sexual assault, emotional and verbal abuse, suicidal ideation, emotional abuse, abuse against LGBTQ+ individuals Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube! Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Head to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code CULT. Stop putting off those doctors’ appointments and go to https://www.Zocdoc.com/CULT to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Please consider donating to those affected by the Los Angeles Fires. Some organizations that Team SLAC are donating to are:  https://mutualaidla.org/ https://give.pasadenahumane.org/give/654134/#!/donation/checkout https://shorturl.at/SGW9w Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. I don't even remember the last time I felt so activated and invigorated by Breaking News story to like instantly hop on the mic and record a Sounds Like a Cult episode. Nothing so culty has happened so quickly. Disgraced Hollywood predator freak. And then we got to the Scientology bit. Signs sealed, delivered.

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montell, author of the books Cultish and The Age of Magical Overthinking. And I'm Maurice Oliver, Sounds Like a Cult's coordinator and today's co-host. Every week on the show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist from Sephora to Cinnanon to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into?

A live-your-life, a watch your back, or a get-the-fuck-out? Our show's whole entire thesis is that, in today's day and age, cults aren't just sort of 70s style cohorts of baroque groupies dabbling in hallucinogens. Sometimes the most nefarious cult leaders can be found hiding in plain sight, right in between the lines of your favorite childhood fantasy novel even. This is a special hot off the press sounds like a cult episode. In light of a very recent expose published by Vulture, we are recording this on Wednesday, January 15th. The expose came out yesterday, January 14th.

Today we are covering the cult of fantasy writer and as it turns out, Scientologist Baby Turnculti Predator Neil Gaiman. You know this guy's work even if you don't recognize his name because he has written dozens and dozens of novels and comics, nine of which I think have been turned into popular movies and TV shows. Neil Gaiman wrote American Gods, Coraline, The Sandman, and for decades his work has been worshipped by readers, a particularly vulnerable type of reader, as it turns out, which is something we'll get into in our analysis.

And according to this brand new investigation, he has allegedly spent decades exploiting that worship in truly the most deranged and chilling of ways. Yes. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace can help simplify your life by letting you build a sleek on-brand website, connect with your audience,

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and go to zocdoc.com slash cult to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's zocdoc.com slash cult's zocdoc.com slash cult. Zocdoc.com slash cult. Long story short, multimillionaire fantasy author Neil Gaiman is an ex-scientologist turned serial sexual assailant enabled by his feminist punk musician ex-wife is pretty much the slack headline of the year. This situation is like so fucking culty

that the first like inkling or notion that we should cover this was when I learned that one of Gaiman's victims has a background within entirely different cults that we were actually planning on covering this week and have thus moved so we could cover this instead. Yeah. Not to like break the fourth wall too much or let you behind the curtain too much. We were supposed to air our Cult of Waldorf School's episode this week. We've already recorded it. That's kind of more of an evergreen topic. This one, however, felt so, so timely. We had to get to it right away.

So by way of we disclaimer, Sounds Like a Cult is not an investigative podcast. We did not do these investigations ourselves. We are going to be talking, however, about Neil Gaiman and these wildly culty abuse allegations against him, his history, the culty overlap with other organizations through our lens, which is to talk about cultishness in everyday life, how it sometimes manifests in places you might not think to look. This is one of those topics that emerges in the news sometimes that reminds me of why this show

exists. Like we are living in a time where worship of certain off the beaten path figures like authors or celebrities is increasing. You know, we are in a loneliness epidemic. We are in a way more vulnerable than ever to potential abuses by cult worshiped everyday figures. That's why the show exists and that's why this episode needed to happen. So just to explain a bit about

where we're getting this information, we will be speaking broadly about the allegations discussed in the Vulture piece that we've already referenced titled There Is No Safe Word, How the Best Selling Fantasy Author Neil Gaiman Hid the Darkest Parts of Himself for Decades by Lila Shapiro. We highly recommend that you read this piece in its entirety. Firstly, it's just wonderfully written, absolutely captivating. We will be hopping all over the article and referencing a whole variety of the experience detailed, but as the piece walks you through the story of Scarlett Pavlovich specifically, who babysat for Gaiman and his ex-wife Amanda Palmer, we will largely be speaking

about her disclosures. This article in large part was based on the British podcast produced by Tortoise Media called Master, reported by Paul Carana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, which shares the stories of five of Gaiman's victims. So in the case that people haven't had the chance yet to read this whole investigative piece, Reese, do we want to kind of summarize the story, not in its entirety, but kind of give people a high level impression of what's going on here and the moment when each of us realized that we had to talk about it on Sounds Like a Cult. Sure. It feels so expansive to even begin to summarize it because it doesn't even feel like a timeline

of one man's events. But the long and short of what we are discussing here is that a number of women have come forward with allegations of sexual assault. And a lot of the allegations against gay men that are the most heartbreaking are very graphic. Too graphic for us to repeat here. And I think that is what a lot of people are drawn to, just like the sheer depravity of his actions. But what really made me see this man, not as just like this horrific monster, but truly as a cult leader, is getting into his interpretations of his own actions and seeing how his background in Scientology and this power he has always had over all of his fans manifest into just this narcissism, I suppose.

Yes. It's a story where you think on its surface it's just about kind of another powerful man abusing his power, but then you look under the hood and it actually goes so much deeper. Like even the most fucked up version of my brain could not have designed a more fascinating and heartbreaking hair-raising story than that of a man who secretly grew up in a high-ranking Scientologist family, was allegedly abused by church members, including his parents, from a very young age, and then inspiration, not only from those abuses, but from the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, who started as a fantasy writer himself. Neil Gaiman took inspiration from both of those two things

to become this, as we stated, multi-millionaire sadistic serial predator who by day writes these beloved fantasy novels and has generated his own cult following of people who say that he has sex appeal, who say that he saved them. I was horrified the second I started diving into this because, well, let me put it this way. I guess for me because he's an author. So it feels close. It feels eerily close. Truly at this moment in my life, if I were to join a cult, it would be a cult started by an author. Yes. If Miranda July started a cult, I would be first in line. Melissa Broder, in my copy of So Sad Today

inscribed to me the words, let me fucking find it, to Reese, it's going to be okay, sort of. And I legitimately considered getting that tattooed today. So I'm right there with you. Dude, okay, that reminds me of another reason why this story feels so close because his victims were artists and nerds, okay? Like they were not the stereotype of this lost seeker

in the 70s who grew up in their boring Protestant church and then realized they wanted to explore the new age. That can feel to some kind of distant and thus it can be easier to dehumanize those types of followers as overly gullible, having nothing in common with discerning critical people like us. But to know that he targeted these women who love art and love to read and all look the same, the way that the article describes it, they are these sort of like waif-like artsy nerdy brunettes. He had a type the way that Charles Manson did, the way that Ted Bundy did. Yeah, something about having such a specific physical type coming from an author feels extra icky to me. It feels like he is very concerned with orchestrating his own reality in all formats, whether that

be his partners, the characters he writes, because that's another thing we'll get into later is he is championed as this feminist writer who writes about these men doing these horrible things, supposedly from this outsider perspective from which readers are supposed to empathize. Yes, that is such a good point. You do learn reading this expose that he admitted at some point to his ex spouse that he didn't even really believe in love. And any evidence that he believed in love in his books was just made up, fabricated.

And you're absolutely right that the curation of women, God, human beings in combination with the fact that he is this prolific novelist is so disgusting. And sadly, not to this degree, but I have met people in Hollywood and in creative fields who behave this way, who treat the world as their own personal soundstage. And it just reading this whole thing

was this chilling reminder that like, if you've ever looked up to a man. Like literally no one is sacred. No one. I like kidding, but Loki, like if you have ever admired a man or the work of a man a little bit too much, you are just as susceptible to cult influence as any Manson girl.

That is like truly chilling because Gaiman is so deceitful that like I can't tell whether or not he believes his own bullshit and I don't know which alternative is scarier. And I think that that is one of the hallmarks of a really good cult leader, is not knowing whether or not they are in on their own joke. Yeah, toward the end of the Vulture article, there's a description of a moment when various women who came out against Neil Gaiman meet for the first time

in a virtual video chat. And the way that one of these women described that experience went like this, quote, for the first time in a virtual video chat. And the way that one of these women described that experience went like this, quote, "'It's been like meeting survivors of the same cult. It's impossible to understand unless you were there.'" That's how this article ends. So that's how you really know that like,

it's not just us, seeing it it to us. They handed it to Colt Lenz, pretty much. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the one-stop digital sanctuary for the modern entrepreneur, where you can manifest your brand's online presence with minimal effort and maximum polish. Squarespace can help simplify your life by letting you build a sleek on-brand website, connect with your audience, and of course sell anything from products to experiences, even to your valuable time, all without ever having to leave the platform. One feature that I'm particularly excited about is their video hosting. You can upload your clips,

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Squarespace also has design intelligence, which does the heavy lifting in terms of populating your site with premium content, matching it to your aesthetic and tailoring it to your brand's personality. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use our promo code cult to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain. Question, have you ever woken up with a weird symptom, like a swollen, itchy eye or like a throat thing that just won't go away and then immediately thought spiraled into a full blown like Google rabbit hole nightmare or turn to TikTok to find out what was really wrong with you?

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Is that an overshare? I don't think so. It could be you. So stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to zocdoc.com slash cult to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's zocdoc.com slash cult to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's z-o-c-d-o-c dot com slash cult, zocdoc.com slash cult. Okay. So this is how we're going to structure the episode today. We are going to move through our culty analysis from love bombing to power dynamics to labor

exploitation, sexual exploitation. We're gonna walk through how they apply to this story as we unveil details of what actually happened here. So Reese, one of the first qualities that is described of Neil Gaiman in this article was his particular breed of, you know, floppy haired, innocent seeming British man charisma and how he used that charisma to love bomb potential victims, survivors. We're going to do, I'm just gonna say for the podcast, the language surrounding sexual assault is very charged and very fraught, and we're gonna do our best here with it,

taking our cues from the piece. Let's talk about the ways that that charisma was used to love bomb women, and how he was able to psychologically manipulate them into thinking that what he later did to them was actually not abuse at all. So the love bombing and the cult of personality that Neil Gaiman has formed over the course of his very long career is unlike anything I've seen before. As a Gen Z-er, my impressions of Neil Gaiman first and foremost, wellaline. And then from then on was I would always see him online having really wholesome interactions

with his readers. Like I would see Tumblr posts of his circulate around the internet all the time. Just these really wholesome stories of him interacting with fans. That could not be any further from the tune he is singing now that these allegations have come forward. To kind of show you the scope of Gaiman's career, he has written books like American Gods and comics like The Sandman, which are like revered by middle-aged men everywhere. But also you can DM him on Tumblr anytime you want and he will probably respond to you. It's very unique the way he was so famous,

but would still just quaintly meet potential cult followers on Tumblr or at his book signings. There's this one paragraph in the Vulture piece that perfectly encapsulates how cult love bombing showed up in Neil Gaiman's relationship with his fans. This was the first paragraph in the piece that I got to and I was like, uh, okay, I gotta start taking, sounds like a cult note, start putting together. We gotta start outlining.

So this paragraph details an experience that this woman, Brenda, who was working a Neil Gaiman book tour event had with the author. It was an event for his comic series, The Sandman. Paragraph goes like this. After the Sandman signing at a dinner attended by those who had worked the event, Gaiman sat next to Brenda. Everyone wanted to be near him, but he was laser focused on me, she says. A few years later, Brenda traveled to Chicago

to attend the World Horror Convention, where Gaiman received the top prize for American Gods, the book that cemented him as a bestselling novelist. The night after the award ceremony, she and Gaiman ended up in bed together. As soon as they began to hook up, the feeling that had drawn her to him, the magical spell of his interest in her individuality, vanished.

He seemed to have a script, she tells me. He wanted me to call him Master immediately. He demanded that she promise him her soul. It was like he'd gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me." me. So what is love bombing other than an overt display of affection and attention later traded for control in a very like systematized and ritualized way? That's exactly what's being described here. Oh, yes. And that's really what it is. The systematizing of his relationships with human beings and so many of these stories playing out exactly the same way. And this huge performative aspect of his career, like him not just being an author, but somewhat of like an OG influencer is definitely one that extends to his marriage

and divorce with Amanda Palmer, which we will get into later. Just as a preview, like immediately the relationship between him and Amanda Palmer, which we will get into later. Just as a preview, like immediately the relationship between him and Amanda Palmer, whose name also might ring a bell because she has had a cult following of her own for years and years as the front woman of the band, the Dresden Dolls. She's like an artist and very sort of like downtown and punk.

As soon as I started reading about their relationship, I was like, oh my God, she's the Alison Mack to his Keith Raniere. Her role in Gaiman's atrocities could be described as at best complicity and at worst trafficking. Co-ordinator, enabler. Yes. So a little bit more about that Gaiman Palmer relationship and how it contributed to his cult. Palmer has always had a very unique social media presence herself. She was one of the first artists to really take advantage of crowdfunding to make art online. She was one of the first artists to really harness the power of Patreon. And her online presence was how one of the key whistleblowers in this vulture piece,

Pavlovich, found the couple initially. It was via this super, super famous Ted talk that Amanda Palmer gave called The Art of Asking. Amanda Palmer's whole MO is to be like anti-establishment with her art making. She said herself that her career is built quote, on messy exchanges of goodwill and the swapping of favors. There was no distinction between fans and friends. That is so fucking culty.

I know. On one hand, you could see how 10, 15 years ago, when I first learned who Amanda Palmer was, how that could be seen as like really radical, you know? Oh yeah, my sister, when she was a teenager, was a huge Amanda Palmer fan and she'd be like, look at this artist I found and little 11 year old me was like, wow, that's so cool. Yeah, I mean, I think now there is a little bit more talk of boundaries, etc. But in theory, you could have great boundaries. And in practice, when your favorite artist is in front of you

and offering you the opportunity to become a part of her life, the way that Amanda Palmer invited Pavlovich to be a part of her life, that knowledge about boundaries goes out the fucking window. Oh, yeah. Like, that is totally not even a question in your mind, especially when these people like Palmer and Gaiman have long posed themselves as safe spaces. So you never even stop twice to think that you might be in danger.

Yes. So on this topic, let's maybe start to tell the story of what actually happened to Scarlett Pavlovich. And along the way, let's talk a little bit more about those power and worship dynamics amongst gay men, Amanda Palmer, and their followers and fans. Yes. Yes.

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so far is that most of the women who have experienced violence at the hands of gay men and or Palmer have been at their mercy in one way or another. So Pavlovich was a fan of Palmer. They met after Pavlovich saw her on the street and approached her after having seen her TED Talk on the Art of Asking. The two became super fast friends, although I'm hesitant to use that word because of the power dynamic. And two years after their first meeting, Palmer asked Pavlovich to watch her and Gaiman's child at his home over a weekend. This babysitting

job was Pavlovich's first encounter with Gaiman. Right. That first encounter would end in an assault and later a manipulation to live at Gaiman's place to be a nanny for his and Palmer's young son. And to make matters worse, prior to moving in with Gaiman and Palmer to babysit for them, Pavlovich's sublet had ended and she had been sleeping in a sleeping bag on the beach. So Pavlovich was completely estranged from her family. And when that is your alternative, it doesn't really matter who is offering you a place to stay, let alone this huge author and their really awesome wife that you've loved the work of for so long.

Yeah. And by the way, this place where Pavlovich was invited to live was an isolated island compound in New Zealand off the coast of Auckland that she had to take a ferry to get to. So speaking of everyday cultishness showing up in places you might not think to look, you think like isolated compound island. Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking culty. We've got the menu too. Yeah, exactly. The menu. Oh my God. But when it's a millionaire author, suddenly that isolated island is not like creepy. It's glamorous. You know, it like literally on paper is so culty. But when you're in the moment, you're like, no, like rich people live on islands.

Like this makes perfect sense. Now I'm going to go live on the island with a rich person. So Pavlovich is in a sleeping bag on the beach, cut off from her family. She's working part-time at this perfumery. She really doesn't have much to ground her in her life. And she sees Amanda Palmer in the street, whom she has seen Ted talks and read books about essentially Palmer having the guidebook to life and gaining friends and connections. Of course, that's gonna feel like an omen. Pavlovich even says like, after all of this, Amanda Palmer was an actual creature

sent from a celestial realm. It was like, hallelujah. She thought she had been saved. And the article pointed out that Gaiman and Palmer built their careers by publicly allying themselves with providing a safer space for vulnerable people like queer female nerds seeking self-expression and exploration. Now, who knows whether Amanda Palmer was doing this as maniacally and diabolically as gay men, but they were using that image to simultaneously traumatize their fans and followers. Another

line from the article that really stuck out to me was, quote, Palmer's vision of herself as the central figure of the utopian community could, according to some of her friends, make her careless with the young impressionable women she invited into her and her husband's lives. So again, like don't worship your favorite artists because like they could accidentally cause you harm just because they're in pursuit of their own power and clout and the rest. Yeah, just because there's no even playing field

you can ever be on with someone like that. Totally. Now we mentioned earlier that the relationship between Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer was similar to Keith Raniere and Allison Mack. Could you tell us a little bit more about that, Reese? Yes. So I think of Palmer and Gaiman as kind of this embodiment of the manic pixie dream girl relationship trope because like we mentioned earlier, when they met, he said he didn't believe in love and she thought that like he was too rich and like pretentious. But of course that also happens to be really convenient for her that all of

her lifestyle choices align with depending on him financially. And, well, I don't even want to say that because I don't know that that's true. And she's an artist and has done a lot of things in her own right. But there was evidence to suggest that she was not the wisest with her funds. This was definitely a mutually beneficial arrangement that allowed both of them to lean into really like unhealthy gender dynamics, ironically enough. But anywho, healthy gender dynamics, ironically enough. But anywho, quoting from that vulture piece, they wed in 2011 and their union had a multiplying effect on their fame and stature, drawing out each of their respective domains of cult stardom and into the airy realm of tech-funded virality. They became darlings of the TED Talk Circuit and regulars at Jeff Bezos' ultra-secret campfire retreat. Yeah, you really sound like champions of the people.

You really sound like it. And they extended that cult-y power couple vibe to their Twitter presence. They're so Elon and Grimesy on there. It's nasty. So when these two wed, part of the assets that Gaiman acquired in this marriage was Palmer's fanbase of devoted young broke women. This would manifest in Palmer essentially utilizing her fame to sleep with fans of hers and then once she was, so to speak, done with them, she would essentially send them to Gaiman

under the guise of giving them employment. Yes, under giving them employment or under the guise of sexual liberation, right? Because I can't remember if it was explicitly at this point, but at certain points in their marriage, they were open, which is important to say. Yes. And Palmer, in a lot of her various art forms, speaks a lot about sexual abuse. And that vulture piece says that Pavlovich didn't think someone like that could be married to someone who would assault women. The disorientation that one must feel after being placed in that situation is truly incomprehensible. Pavlovich

Googled if any other women had publicly come out about gay men or if any of them had experienced anything unsavory and found like absolutely nothing. And I can't fathom how much that must make you not trust your own intuition. The first quote that I read in this Vulture piece that made me realize that maybe Palmer's hand in this was definitely not a neutral one was when one of the women who was 20 upon first sleeping with Palmer was then on her way to stay with Gaiman and it was implied that they were going to have a sexual relationship. And she asked Palmer essentially, hey, any tips for sleeping with your husband?

And Palmer responded with, I think the fun is finding out on your own, which now having hindsight and the knowledge that Palmer was likely privy to a lot of what was occurring behind closed doors, that is just insidious. To be like just blatantly clear, as far as I can tell from this article, literally no one enjoyed having sex with Neil Gaiman. No one, to put it mildly, and that includes Palmer.

So it's like girl code, don't let a 20 year old sleep with your middle-aged husband who you know is bad in bed, So it's like, girl code, don't let a 20 year old sleep with your middle-aged husband who you know is bad in bed, but also like, don't let a 20 year old fan sleep with your husband who's a sexual assailant. Like- Like fly to a separate location to spend the night at your husband's house,

whom you know is a sexual assailant without you and possibly in the presence of your child. So it's 50 different shades of fucked up. This brings us to another of the cultiest moments from this vulture piece, just zooming out and talking about how Neil Gaiman was so strategic about finding especially vulnerable people to prey upon. The article says, quote, people who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an inherently vulnerable community.

That was according to one of Gaiman's former friends, who's also a fantasy writer. They quote, wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self identity. They want to share their souls with the creators of these works. And if you have morality around it, you say no. And I've experienced this to a much smaller degree, but like I've written about kind of intense topics, like power abuse and mental health and things. And I've had people spill their guts to me and earlier in my career, I used to engage a little bit more and respond and say something empathetic, but also neutral.

Like, I'm so glad that you were able to get out of this situation. Thank you so much for sharing. I wish you well, heart heart. Just to let them know that I'm a real person and I saw their message and stuff. But I always felt really confused about what the most appropriate way to respond

to that type of thing was. And now I'm just way, way less on the internet and I have like DM requests and stuff. Point is I am so aware that like there could be a power dynamic. There could be, and I just want nothing to do with that. I don't blame you, Al. That's like a lot of, that's a lot of pressure. But let's hear from a few other of Gaiman's victims. Yeah.

Similarly to this hallelujah moment that Pavlovich had, Catherine Kendall, another one of Gaiman's victims said that, the same voice that told me those beautiful stories when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe and that we were just friends and that he wasn't a threat. And that's another thing that got me throughout this article was people really harped on Gaiman's vocal quality and just that he was a very persuasive speaker. And to have that tied to such a strong nostalgia, that's got to be a hell of a powerful experience. Completely.

So by way of cult analysis, we should at least acknowledge the labor exploitation that Gaiman and Palmer engaged in. Pavlovich got involved with the family under the guise that she would be a babysitter, a nanny, and then for the first while wasn't paid and then was paid very little. And all the while, as Pavlovich was babysitting nannying for free, Gaiman was assaulting her. The article said, a week or so into Pavlovich's time with the family, their son began to address. Oh my god, this is so crazy. So if you recall, Gaiman's playbook involved requiring those he assaulted to call him master. The son picked this up, the little son. The article says a week or so

into Pavlovich's time with the family as babysitter, their son began to address her as slave and ordered Pavlovich to call him master. And what made all of this a hundred times cultier was that Pavlovich had nowhere to go. Pavlovich had no stable housing outside of this fucking island. And you know that Gaiman knew in his bones that what he was doing was wrong because another victim named Caroline, who Gaiman manipulated into being proximal to him by offering her land on his property when she was finally able to successfully put her foot down and be like,

this abuse is not continuing anymore, he retracted that promise of land, demanded that she sign an NDA so that none of that would ever get out, and offered her a paltry $5,000. This was the best though. Her visceral response was like, $5,000. I'm going to need to be in therapy and recovering from this for years. How about $300,000? And you know what? He fucking paid it. And in the same breath, he's trying to claim that he's innocent. No one who counters a $5,000 and no one who gives you $300,000 without question is innocent. And he kept doing this. He kept paying hush money allegedly to people he assaulted.

Another person he paid $60,000 for therapy to quote, make up some of the damage after his time with her was done. Like this was again a pattern and this juxtaposition of of very sinister exchange and abuse with his squeaky clean, wholesome, quote unquote, allied public presence speaks to how effectively he manipulated reality. Which makes me want to ask, Rhys, could you explain what happened once Pavlovich finally spoke out about what Neil Gaiman had done to her? So after Pavlovich finally disclosed what had been happening to her at the hands of Gaiman to Palmer, Palmer later texted her this just esoteric poetic bullshit. From the minute you entwined your fate with mine on Ponsonby Road, I've been glad I met

you. That is so tenfold now. Gaiman, on the other hand, when he had been told of the emotional turmoil that Pavlovich had been experiencing through a grapevine of his ex-wife and I guess some kind of pseudo therapist minister figure that he had been going to, in a text to her he said, I wanted to kill myself, but I'm getting through it a day at a time. And it's been two weeks now and I'm still here. Fragile, but not great. He later writes that he thought they were having a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed. And when you are confronted with like such an opposing narrative from something

that you have internalized as the truth, especially from someone whom you've regarded as an authority figure, of course, your instinct is to refute your own experience, which is exactly what Pavlovich did because of the power that Gaiman had over her. And because she was so terrified of upsetting him in any way, she essentially rushed to reassure him that the experience was consensual, even though she knows that's not true, we all know that's not true. And it's so frustrating because it really complicates this whole conversation. That Neil Gaiman basically manipulated Pavlovich into retracting her truth on purpose. Yes, completely. And I think it was compounded by the fact that Neil Gaiman took a page out

of the Army Hammer book of excuses and claimed that what they were engaging in was consensual BDSM. That's exactly what Army Hammer said after the people that he assaulted came forward. So I'm just like, apparently this is the phase of like predatorship that we're in now. They're like, oh no, it was kink.

It was not, it was abuse. And this article goes into the origin story of where Neil Gaiman learned how to abuse people and then excuse, deny, or rewrite, if you will, what actually happened so effectively. And it was in the motherfucking Church of Scientology. Like this was the mind blow moment for me. This was the like, what the fuck moment for me.

Yes, like of course the Church of Scientology would have something to do with this. So Neil Gaiman managed to keep a secret his whole entire very public life, mostly a secret, that he grew up in this very high ranking Scientology family. Now we're going to give it to you in a nutshell. Pretty much when Neil was five, his parents, David and Sheila, left their lives behind to not only become followers of Scientology, but to become recruiters, spokespeople. And as a little kid, Neil Gaiman was brought up doing Scientology's

bidding as well. Apparently he was very good at it. But Scientology has allegedly been abusing people in the most sadistic Neil Gaiman-esque ways on mass for a very, very long time. I reported on this a little bit and cited some testimonials from ex-scientologists in my book, Cultish. For one, Scientology views children as just adults in little bodies. So there is no difference between the fucked up ways

that Scientology punishes and controls adults and the way that they punish and control little kids. You know, the worst of Scientology's punishments involve, according to this Vulture article, you know, if you committed an infraction against the church, they'd tie you up, blindfold you, and throw you overboard of a boat. But there were also things that would go wrong

where say, you know, you were in a Scientology course and you demonstrated fatigue, you yawned, or you got something wrong, they might make you do physical punishment that was extremely humiliating, like licking the floor. Get this, Neil Gaiman's most recent book is a novel about a little boy that seems to echo Gaiman's childhood experiences in Scientology.

The Vulture piece says this, according to someone who knew the Gaimans, David and Sheila did apply Scientology's methods of punishment at home. When Neil Gaiman was around the same age of the little kid in his book, which is called The Ocean at the End of the Lane. This person who was close to the family said that David, his dad, took him up to the bathtub, ran a cold bath, and drowned him to the point where Neil was screaming for air.

This all kind of really contextualizes Neil Gaiman's abuses, which is not an excuse. I mean, think of all the ex-scientologists who didn't grow up to be Neil Gaiman's abuses, which is not an excuse. I mean, think of all the ex-Scientologists who didn't grow up to be Neil Gaiman, but it is an explanation and it's terrifying because it begs the question, how many degrees of separation are any one of our favorite artists and creators

from a group as fucked up as Scientology? Yeah, this whole portion about his book I found so interesting. He dedicated the book to Amanda, who wanted to know because his ex wife had asked him about his childhood in Scientology and he it's like so unable to process any of that in any other way than writing, which again, probably the Scientology talking. So clearly Elrond Hubbard and Scientology were not just the inspiration behind his career pursuit as a fantasy novelist and the like specifically

sadistic things that he would force women to do. More abstractly, it's where he learned how to psychologically break people. Pavlovich told Vulture that after having experienced what she did with Neil Gaiman, she understands how Scientologists might have felt when they were sent to the Hole, as it's called, which was this detention center where Scientologists who'd broken a rule were forced to lick the floor as punishment. This part sent shivers down my spine. The article said, quote, Pavlovich had heard of how some Scientologists would stay in the room

even after they were allowed to leave. People keep licking the floor in that horrible room, she says, because they are taught to hate themselves and thus they are taught to stay. And that is exactly the cult leader bullshit that Neil Gaiman learned how to do. Yeah. She has a quote where she says something like, when you find someone who hates you as much as you hate yourself, it feels rational or something along those lines. Hating yourself makes life really fucking hard. And finding someone that is like, I know, I know the way you're living is really hard, but you're correct. The morbid relief in that is so captivating. And I think

that that's what Pavlovich is getting at. Now doing our due diligence, we do want to say that literally during this recording, so like a few minutes ago, our recording producer, Katie, shout out, discovered that Palmer had released a statement, or at least her representatives. So that statement says this, while Miss Palmer is profoundly disturbed by the allegations that Mr. Gaiman has abused several women at this time, her primary concern is and must remain the well-being of her son and therefore to guard his privacy, she has no comment on these allegations. But I think we have summarized everything we possibly can within the scope of a Sounds Like a Cult episode.

We've done our culty analysis. It might be time for our verdict. Reese, out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. Which one do you think the cult of Neil Gaiman falls into? This is one of those episodes where it feels wrong to even provide a verdict. Clearly I'm getting the fuck off the island.

I'm getting the fuck out. I hope everyone who's ever interacted with him gets the fuck out. That's pretty much it. I want to make a book recommendation, Monsters by Claire Deterrer. The subtitle is a fan's dilemma. This book is a reckoning with how to and if we should consume the art of bad men, so to speak. But I think that episode is bigger than the get the fuck out level cult that is obviously Neil Gaiman. There's so much to be learned about this. This just speaks to the cultishness of our time. Like I can envision a prior time in history when you would not be

able to interact with your favorite authors at Comic-Con, much less possibly sleep with them. And in combination with, I mean, Neil Gaiman's books have gotten nerds through a lot. And just all these factors working together make me feel like anything we can do to encourage a lack of cult worship in our society is cool with me. I think this story is really kind of a cautionary tale. It's just like really like you were saying earlier, to me, reminds me why we do this show. Because even though, yes, we talk about like silly, stupid things, if you love everything the way you love your silly, stupid thing, that's not good. I know. I know. I'm like reminded. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's why we have our cultish spectrum.

Oh yeah, that's why, you know, Trader Joe's is a live your life and Sephora is a live your life if you're an adult and Neil Gaiman is a get the fuck out. I think the lesson to take away from it is like, beware of men and always be scrutinizing. And that doesn't mean that you have to be paranoid. And that doesn't mean that you have to totally disengage

from the things that you adore and the things that bring you belonging during these ever lonely and polarized and stressful times. But there is something in between surrender and cynicism. And if you can stomach operating in that in between, then I think you can have the best of both worlds and you can do our silly, but in the context of this episode, actually sensible outro tagline, stay culty, but not too culty man. When something or someone makes you feel special, don't doubt that instinctually,

but take a moment at some point to reflect what that thing or person's motives may be. That is never a bad idea. Well, that is our show. Thank you so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. And in the meantime, Stay culty. But, stay culty. But not too culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. Sounds Like a Cult was created, hosted, and produced by Amanda Montel. This episode was co-produced and co-hosted by Reese Oliver, edited by Amanda Montel, and mixed by Jordan Moore of the Podcabin.

Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Wordslet, A Feminist's Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network studio, 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at

Sounds Like a Cult Pod, or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. Calling all magical overthinkers in the Vancouver area, big announcement for you, you are invited to come spiral with me in person for a one night only live show at the Just for Laughs Festival in Vancouver, Canada on Friday, February 21st at 7pm. This live show is called the Big Magical Cult Show, and it is so much fun. Not only does the show involve a deep dive analysis of parasocial relationships and celebrity

worship, kind of like a magical overthinkers episode on steroids, but there are also magical elements like drag and burlesque performances, brilliant special guests, custom Overthinker merch and drinks. I mean, who wouldn't want to sip on a cocktail called the French 75 reasons I can't sleep at night? Am I right? There will also be a book signing, a meet and greet, and some truly over-the-top surprises that honestly can't be explained. They just have to be experienced. Tickets are available now at amandamontel.com slash events and make sure to snag one before they're sold out because this is going to be an intimate little gathering just for us over-thinkers. The Big Magical Cult Show is coming to the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver for one night only on February 21st and I hope to

see you there!