The Jordan Harbinger Show - 770: Sarah Edmondson & Nippy Ames | Surviving NXIVM Part One

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Sarah Edmondson (@sarahjedmondson) and Anthony "Nippy" Ames (@nippyames) are two former NXIVM cult members turned whistleblowers. Together, they host the podcast A Little Bit Culty, and are featured in HBO's series The Vow. Sarah's 12-year ordeal is chronicled in Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life. [This is part one of a two-part conversation. Stay tuned for part two later this week!] What We Discuss with Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames: How NXIVM began as a community of like-minded individuals who were committed to personal growth and self-improvement and devolved into a cult under the leadership of its narcissistic founder, Keith Raniere. How Hollywood celebrities came to be courted and ultimately controlled by Raniere and the NXIVM cult. The endless abuses suffered by NXIVM's victims — from mind games to being branded as property and trafficked as a way to fund Raniere's lavish lifestyle. Where Sarah and Nippy existed within NXIVM's hierarchy, the parts they played, and what broke the spell that held them enthralled in the cult's sinister machinations. How Sarah and Nippy are coping with the aftermath of their traumatic experiences, and what they're doing to raise awareness of how cults like NXIVM ruin people's lives. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/770 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I think one of the first things is creating the belief that we found the best thing, which creates an us versus them. So there was a sort of internal righteousness as individuals, but as a collective. So the community that we came to love felt like they'd say things like this is eventually like chosen family. So if anyone was criticizing, that created the isolation. They never said there was never active. Like you can't talk to somebody, but it was more like, well, what does it mean if you're communicating with somebody who doesn't

support what you do. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists, entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional mafia enforcer, Russian spy, rocket scientist or hostage negotiator. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a way to tell your friends about it, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do

here on the show. Topics like persuasion and influence, disinformation and cyber warfare, crime and cults, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, we're talking with Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames, former members of a cult called nexium. Now, if you've seen the vow on HBO, you've seen the expose on this. We're going to hear stories from the inside and how somebody who should know better, in theory, gets roped into and stays in a harmful and abusive, coercive cult. Really a fascinating conversation with two people who've done a lot of thinking about this and a fascinating inside look at one of America's most famous cults. This is a two-part episode. There was a lot here. And I co-hosted this one

with none other than Gabe Mizrahi. So we have two hosts and two guests. why not? Kind of a different format for us here today. So for those who don't know are not familiar, nexium, it started as a self-help group and became an abusive sex trafficking cult. And the leader, Keith Reneery, is now in prison for 120 plus years and five months of probation. And it just, it was shocking, right? Because the people who joined, they joined what they thought was a regular sort of self-help group. It turned out to be a crazy cult. There was sexual abuse. People branded themselves, they went on the run to Mexico, it's a whole thing. I mean, it's a whole crazy saga that started as a way to be better at work or with your friends and family. Am I hitting all the

bases here? Yeah, that's pretty much, I mean, if you guys haven't seen The Vow, which is remarkable, by the way, it's on HBO, highly recommend it. Nexium was this cult that really didn't seem to start out quite as culty as it became. And the thing that started as a curriculum designed to help you achieve more in your personal life and level up in your business and be a better citizen in the world became something much darker. And it's one of the fascinating things about nexium is that it's unclear whether the more diabolical stuff was really baked in from the beginning or whether Keith Reneery, who's the founder and the so-called vanguard of the organization, used this fairly benign and helpful in some ways curriculum to do some really dark stuff.

And namely what ended up being sex trafficking, as sleeping with minors, manipulating people and keeping them in the organization and creating a whole apparatus that basically supported his narcissistic and sociopathic impulses to sleep with people, get a ton of attention, probably extract a ton of money out of them because that was a big part of the organization. So nexium is a strange thing, but what it ultimately ended up becoming was, yeah, a very malicious cult. And Sarah and Nipi were in the center of it. Sarah was a fairly high-level teacher.

and Nippy was also a teacher, and they both were there from very early days and saw this organization morph and become something very sinister. Sarah obviously has a very intense personal story that we are going to get into on this episode. She was there firsthand for some of the darkest aspects of nexium. And once they realized that there was this very malicious stuff going on, decided to become whistleblowers and let the authorities know what nexium was actually up to and ended up becoming the people who helped take the organization down. It's absolutely fascinating.

Those are the broad strokes, but if you guys want the details and you should get the details, watch the bow. Here we go with Sarah and Nippy. I would love to start with what nexium is or at least what it was supposed to be. Because in its face, it's like, okay, this is a personal growth seminar that probably had intros at a hotel near the airport. And you show up. Your boss sends you there or something to learn how to be more.

communicative with your new team at work. And it just looks kind of harmless. And then it turned out to not be harmless at all. And it turned out to be this crazy, crazy call that was worth HBO creating two seasons and counting on what's going on there. It's shocking. And I think that's part of the story, of course, but what initially was nexium supposed to be? It's a great way to ask it. There's what we thought it was, what we thought it was, what we were signing up for was a personal and professional development program. Had I met you at a coffee shop or I would have found out what your goals were and where you felt limited in your life. Usually it was some emotional thing like you got angry at people or couldn't follow through on your goals or had limiting beliefs about yourself or

your self-esteem. And I would ask if it would be worth two grand to fix that limitation for five days. And if it was, I'd help you get into a program and that's what it was. It helped me so much in my life that I was such a zealous promoter of it that when I met people, it was a really easy pitch. It was spend five days, look at your life, upgrade your software, apply it to your life, achieve your goals, easy. And in some ways, I still think most of the five day was that if you didn't continue. I've since learned that there were lots of things in that initial training that hooked people in and could be really abusive if used by people with that intent. But for the most part, people came and took trainings.

All the things you said, better communication, higher self-esteem, working through what we called disintegrations, so areas that you felt limited in. Maybe you had conflicting beliefs around things like money. Like, I want to earn money, but I also think it's the root of all evil. Like, that's a really common thing that a lot of people have. We found growing up a nexium, we found. There's a lot of common things that people would struggle with. Which I think was the intent of the curriculum, find things that we can.

can all kind of agree upon that we struggle with and have a curriculum and deep discussions around them and then provide kind of a working answer. Right. Okay. And there's nothing wrong with that on its face. And that's one of the reasons that this is so interesting. And I'll get into this a little bit later. But I'm watching The Vow on HBO, right? And I'm watching this terrible cult. And I've followed the news and I know how it ends. And yet I hear Nancy Salzman, who's one of the chief creators of the curriculum or the chief. And I'm like, this is so interesting. I should totally take this class. Wait a minute. No. They're in prison. Now, hold on. Get a grip, Jordan. These are not the droids you're looking for, right? This is not the thing. Because it's just, it turned out to be like many self-help groups. It had this dark underbelly. It's funny. A long time ago, I wanted to take landmark. And people are like, it's a cult. And then other people were like, it's fine. I took it three years ago. I sort of remember some of it. It was kind of useful. The end. And other people are like, I've been in it for five years. And my brain is, I can't even talk like a normal human because all I, all that comes out is landmark words.

And I'm thinking like, okay, there's clearly a level where you go in and you come out and it's fine, which is where most people went with nexium. They took the course. It helped him a little bit. And they left. They never came back. And they were like, oh, that was kind of fun. I sort of remember it. I think it helped me with XYZ.

And then there's the people who come out and they're like, I was sex trafficked from another country. And it's like, wait, is this the same thing? How does that work? It's like joining the YMCA to go to the gym and suddenly your organs are harvested. You're like, how do that happen? It's such a good example. but we had a friend actually who did both Landmark and ESP. So ESP is executive success programs.

It's the program that we taught in Nexium, the personal development stuff. And she said, you know, with all of it, it's like if you take the tools and put them in your life, you're fine. But if you make the tools, your life is when it becomes a problem. And I see that with both Landmark students and Nexium students, the people that went up the straight path, the people that became coaches and Landmark and devoted all their time unpaid. Same problem. In fact, I have to be careful because Landmark is incredibly. incredibly litigious.

They are. Why we haven't yet done an episode on them. We could sometimes refer to them as schmadmark so that we don't get sued. Right. Something. I didn't say landmark. I should schmandmark. It's totally different.

If you see a similarity, that's on you. Exactly. Yeah. So schmanmark, in my opinion, is the same thing as an axiom, minus the leader having a harem of women. Minus anything that could incur legal liability for us doing this podcast right now. Yes. You might say they've done it smarter because it was originally the first.

the brainchild of Warner Earhart, and then he in the early 80s kind of stepped out. I still think gets some of the revenue or something like that. So maybe for him, it wasn't about sex with 15-year-old girls. It was about keeping the power and the money and he's able to outsource it and smoke and mirrors it. Whereas Keith, he needed to be the vanguard. He had his, he had his own vices and couldn't temper them, obviously. So for people who are like, who's Keith, what are these names? I don't know who the, basically any sort of self-help seminar, these names are people that have started these seminars. If you don't know the names, it doesn't really matter, but Keith Reneer or Reneer, is it Reneery or Reneer?

Reneery. Reneery, okay. We call him Allen, but that's okay. You can call him Keith. Sure. Well, we called him Vanguard. Alan's his middle name and we just like, you know, Keith is just. A couple of people who have left have been like, we're done using his name.

We're going to go with his middle name. Got it. Okay. Yeah. It's like he who shall not be named. It's like the Voldemort. Yes. Okay, got it.

Voldemort. This guy is now, he's in, spoiler alert. He's in prison for a long time. Lost his appeal. we can talk about that in a little bit, but he's the leader and one of the founders of Nexium, which is the cult, Nancy Salzman, as I mentioned earlier, was the designer of the curriculum. And you have some other notable names, Allison Mack, who was on Smallville, she's an actress, was an actress, and Claire Bronfman, who is the heir to, is it the Seagrams?

I always get this wrong, Seagram's Liquor. Yeah. So her father is Edgar Bronfman Jr., who's head of the Hillel House. Big time, yeah, hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, he pulls levers. He pulls levers. Yeah, that's one thing that was surprising about this, too. If my daughter's in a cult and I'm a billionaire, you think I've got people who can research this, who can take this whole organization down because I am basically a billionaire with unlimited

amounts of power. And yet he still just couldn't, he either didn't pay attention early enough. Oh, I think you tried. Yeah, it looks like he tried. And that says something about your power. Apparently, he's behind the first big article that was written against him, the Forbes article that came out back when they were this tiny little group. So it seemed that maybe he had something to do with that, but that's just what we were told

when we were in it. And we were told so many lies. Right. We don't really know, like, what's wet anymore. Which end is up? Yeah. Yeah. So Claire Bronfman, her dad, the wealthy liquor magnate, possibly the guy who ended up writing or having a big expose written in Forbes about nexium. So what does nexium mean? It actually sounds like the name of a medication. It is. There's a heartburn medication.

Oh, it is. Oh, okay. I was like, it's just, yeah, like if you talk to your doctor about nexium, if you're in a sex trafficking cult, stop using nexium immediately. It's a made-up word. Well, NX, IVM is made-up. We do know, we've since learned that every name that he came up for each company is his own kind of little inside joke for himself. DOS, which came later and we'll get to that, is the first computer program software. That's what came up for me, the first computer, like the text-based before Windows computer operating system. And that was his era when he would have learned in the, what is it, like early to mid-80s.

I don't know. I don't know my computer history, but genus, same thing. That's the women's program that comes from the root word, G-Y-N, like gynecological. So it's like of the woman. And nexium, apparently, we were told it was a place of learning in Latin or Greek or whatever, but it's actually from the root word, which means debt bondage. Oh, wonderful. The debt bondage that happened in Roman times.

So I think that was his way of being like, yes, I'm going to lock you down forever and create dependency, and you won't even know it. And you think you're free, but you're not. It's so on the nose. reminds me of, you know, those conspiracy theorists that say, look, if you look really closely here, all these Illuminati's super powerful people are leaving clues. And it's like, if they're that powerful, they're not putting a clue in a painting for some idiot who lives in his mom's basement to find. And yet Keith Reneer is like, you know what, I'm going to make this really obvious during trial and put evidence everywhere that only I understand and that somebody who has Google can find out later on and make me look really bad. And also save all my text messages with my slaves about all the bad things I'm going to do. Funny you bring that up because when I was looking at the trial here, they said, we got his WhatsApp messages. And I was like, crap, that law enforcement can get what's at messages.

I thought they were all encrypted. And then two seconds later, the narrator's like all of, or the prosecutor says, that's some reason he saved all of his text messages. And I'm just thinking like, oh, what are you doing? You're using an encrypted chat app. And you're like, let me just make a record of all this in plain text for the FBI later on. Well, he saved everything. Everything was filmed.

Every single thing was filmed. And this was not in the vow. So just to give you an extent of it, if he went on stage and did a forum, which is him speaking word salad for two to four hours, he would have about 10 people in the audience of the clipboard marking down with the stopwatch. Oh, at 1042, Keith told a joke about flatulence. At 16, he made a state, like basically gathering all the quotes in different categories. And that would all be documented so that they could one day make a library of his genius. This is why there was so much footage and so much audio, because everything was recorded. So the vow for people who haven't seen it, there's tons of footage and you think, what is all this about?

How did they get this amazing insight into this. And the reason is because this narcissistic cult leader wanted everything documented. And he even says, one day, you know, they might think we did something wrong. And then they'll watch the footage and they'll realize we didn't. It's like, you know, that's not what happened, actually. What happened is there's a shitload of evidence for you being a narcissistic cult leader. And it's all in HD and well lit. not to jump to the end. You do know that there are people who are still loyal saying that was all planted. Yeah. And it's all been tampered with and he is good. And yet, it's like, hey, man, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff in there that probably didn't even make it into the vow that was probably used in court. Because, you know, that's, it's just amazing.

It's amazing. It's amazing. Like, when we came forward with what we knew, it was like a 10th, not even like a 2% of what came out in court. Like, what we knew was one thing. And then that was the tip of the iceberg, which was a whole other story. Yeah, we weren't their problem after a while. Initially, we were their biggest problem.

And then once we kind of broke the dam. Right, because you two were the initial or some of the initial whistleblowers. And then once the prosecutor started digging and found all that stuff, it was like, thank you for your service. I think we're okay here. We got plenty of this stuff to chew on. It was actually just like that. It was actually just like that.

Sarah had just had our second child. And they were like, we thought she was going to have to testify because we got dragged into this thing. And it turned out, it was like, we did. we got this. Yeah, we'll call you if we need you, but we have a freight train full of incriminating text messages and footage. In fact, if you want to help, you can help us unload the footage. Right. You carry some boxes because we have a lot of tape. Tell me about collateral, because I think a lot of people are thinking, you know, what is this stuff that the cult does? It's got the executive success program. It's got this weird sorority of people that turned out to be kind of like

sex slaves. But how are you bonded in this organization? Why not just leave? And that's where collateral comes in. That's like the number one thing people ask me right to being like, why would you give them a false confession or a photo or things that you wouldn't want leak to the public? And the concept of collateral had been built in three to four years, maybe even longer before that. Keith was so brilliant at the long game and say brilliant like sociopathically brilliant, knowing that he had to like plant seeds and build and build and build. He in fact, even taught a class about how true sociopaths play the long game. Wow. They don't just like key your car if they're mad at you. They'll slowly poison your dog over many years and watch you suffer. So collateral is,

I think, a good example of that. We've been doing it for years as a practice in terms of putting something down as a weight for your word. Like, I say that I'm going to go to the gym. And if I don't, I'm giving you this collateral nippy. I give you permission to give $500 to charity or whatever. Like there is something that you'd place, like the same thing collateral is used to purchase a home or any big asset, right? But it became more personal and more damaging. But just one caveat's here. Those are clear exchanges.

Yeah, exactly. You know what the exchanges. And so it felt like in that community that was a normal thing to, it became very normalized. Right. Okay. So this is like, hey, if I don't quit smoking, you're going to write a $500 check to the white supremacist nationalist party. And I really don't want that.

So I'm not going to smoke. Exactly. That's the collateral. Whereas this was more like, I just have damaged. stuff on you that I'm going to keep for an unspecified period of time to be used whenever you don't do what I want you to do. Well, it wasn't quite presented that way. I was invited by Lauren, who's my best friend and somebody I trust probably more than anyone other than my husband. And she's saying, I'm going to hold this to make sure you stay on path, on track.

And in that context, if what she was saying was true and it wasn't a women's organization started by a man who's collecting collateral for a spank bank, you know, then it might have been a nice thing to have a sisterhood where someone's keeping you on track and you're accountable to somebody. I mean, I'm not with nude photos. You don't need nude photos to do that. What's important to add that. Right.

Yeah. So the nude photos took things obviously to the next level. I'm just saying for people who don't understand, this is 12 years in. This is in a community where I trust everyone. I think the people who are helping me have my best interest at heart and that this exercise that we're doing is an exercise. And it's a game. She's not really my master and I'm not really her slave.

We don't even live in the same city. Like, it's a title. It's like, guru disciple. Everything was like, it's just this. Some big deal. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guests, Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all the great authors, thinkers, creators every single week,

well, it's because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. The course is all about improving your relationship building skills and inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you. The course does all of that in a super easy, non-cringy, down-to-earth kind of way, no awkward strategies, no cheesy tactics, just practical exercises that'll make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer, six minutes a day, not even that, that's all it takes, and many of the guests on the show, subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us, you'll be in smart company. Course is all free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Now, back to Sarah Edmondson and

nippy aims. When do you realize that you are in a cult? Because Mark Vesente, your friend and colleague in the organization, he says, we didn't join a cult. Nobody joins a cult. We joined a movement to do good. And he comes across as a pretty smart dude. I think his point was that smart, reasonable people can get caught up in organizations like this. And the organization either becomes a cult over time or it reveals itself to be a cult over time. Because a lot of people are are going to go, I would never get caught up into this. And it's like, well, you don't go, hi, I need to join your cult. I'm here to join your cult. You join because you think it's going to help your acting career or your business or something along those lines. It's the frog

and the boiling water concept. You just don't realize it's boiling because it happens so slowly and you start to, you're rationalizing it yourself over a period of months or even years. Thank you for summarizing our main message from the past five years. That's really it. I mean, that's something that we've been really passionate about. But it's changed. Like when we got out five years ago, it was more skepticism and a lot more of like that could never happen to me. And now, thank you to the vow and many documentaries about cults that I know that you're a fan of, not just the vow. I think people are more more on that side, a little bit like, well, I might not have joined Nexium, but I definitely would have joined CrossFit or like that church or that yoga studio or whatever. You know, there's different draws depending on what people's values are.

But for us, in terms of how we woke up, there were so many things. I mean, there's so many red flags along the way from day one. But as you probably know from watching the vow, we were trained to override our intuition. We have the feeling of something's not right. There must be something like a limitation within me. I don't like the sashes. I don't like the sashes. Oh, it's because I have authority issues.

Oh, you're right. I do have authority issues. Okay. I'll stick it out. I'm not going to say anything. One thing too, Sarah, caveat to that. Like with the sashes and those things too, yes, they seem weird. But when you're in a curriculum and they're saying human beings generally,

established rules and rituals. Ours were emulating the dojo system as a ranking system. I'm like, okay, I can get on board with that for today. Yeah, white bell, green bill. For today, right? And like, and there was other things that they kept going, they minimized the weirdness pretty well. And they got good at minimizing the weirdness to the point where like, okay, I'll stay for a couple days. I'll do my five day. You know, because I can remember for me, it was, I'm going to do my five day and I'm piecing out, right? And then over time, I took a class here and there, and it was a slow kind of burn. The example they also gave was like when you go to someone's house and they take off their shoes at the house, like you take your shoes off, even if you like, it's going to ruin your

outfit. Maybe that's more of a woman thing. But like, okay, I'll take my shoes off because it's your house and that's your rules. So that's sort of how it's presented. It's like, it's what we do here while you're here, you know, wear the sash, take your shoes off. And we bow and say thank you, Vanguard after every class because he created the curriculum. Okay. Yeah. And you're like, okay, it's a little weird, but yeah, who cares? I can deal with this for five days, whatever. We even had a class about what a cult is because we were taught that people are going to say you're in a cult and how do you respond to that. And we had a whole diatribe about that. And I didn't mind that objection because I knew how to handle it. And specifically it was people use the word cult. And I think this is true and they just want to say something's bad, but they don't say specifically what's bad about it. Are you murdering children? Are you drinking Kool-Aid? Are you stealing people's money? Are you creating dependency? Are you isolating them from your families? No. So we couldn't see. the bad thing. So we saw the bad thing eventually, which is all those things being isolated, create dependency, there's a lie, there's a con, there's sex happening. Like, sex in itself is fine.

But the fact is that he's saying he's celibate. And now we find out that he's got a heron. Right, the co-leader, yeah. I'm celibate, except with the five underage women that I have locked in rooms in houses around the neighborhood. Do you know what a betrayal it was to find that out after I've spent 12 years being like, this is Keith Reneery's most noble, humanitarian, an ethical man in the world who created the most incredible curriculum that changed my life, who also has a harem of women and he may or may not be poisoning them. That's a whole separate. Oh my God, I didn't even see that thing. But in the book, you mentioned a friend of yours tried to tell you that nexium was a cult early on. I assume when that came in, you were like,

oh, I took a class about this. Yeah. I'm going to tell you why you're wrong or ignore it or whatever. Yeah, I was like, I get it. I'm like, you know, if I didn't know what we were teaching and looking at from the outside, I think it was a cult too. And maybe it is a cult, but it's a cult of happy, successful people and, you know, I don't see anything bad. That's a cult I can get behind, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, look, it's so interesting. In season two of The Vow, Nancy really grapples with the paradox of nexium looking back, that a lot of what the organization taught, the core curriculum outside of the horrible, dark stuff Keith was doing, that that material was still possibly good and valuable and maybe designed to help people.

And I'm sure she was somewhat biased because she created the program. But as she comes to terms, how bad Keith really was. She starts to ask herself, like, was the curriculum actually good? Or did Keith just create the good or have me create the good in order to justify or enable the bad? I found that so interesting, whether the teachings of Nexham are still useful in some way, or if they were, you know, corrupted and manipulated to serve Keith's agenda. What's your take on that? I would say, because the curriculum never opened itself up to standard practices where we have, in our agreed upon, these are standards you should meet and all that stuff. We're never going to know. We do know that it was stolen from a lot of different places. Sarah and I have subsequently gone out and

find books. I think, Marty Lefcoe, is that the Lefco method? Marty Lefcoe is a method that we think he stole the EM tech from? I read a book called Power versus Force by David Hawkins. And down to the examples in the book, where some of the examples in the modules, almost he was too lazy to change the language. I read it and was like, fuck me. Like, what the shit? This is exactly like I could have read this. And so there's a lot of that. And I don't know how much more there is.

I just think that she was, he was effective at cobbling together. Basic, you know, self-help stuff, putting it into packages that were pretty digestible so people could have some shifts. And then had to keep the get going. And Nancy was more than willing to do it, knowing what she knew. Yeah, just to add to that. And I agree with Nippy, we don't really know. But the jury's out. Like there's people in Nexium who are like, fuck all this.

Throw the baby out. got to start again. I spent 12 years there. Nippy in and out for 16. I didn't want to do that. And I did get a lot of value. I just had to find out where it came from originally. So I don't have to say, thank you, Vanguard, after being more productive with my time or communicating better or lots of things that I learned were not from him. And I do think if you pull all these things and also Scientology, which is actually from like other things, like the good parts, there's good parts in all of these things. Otherwise, why would people stay? It doesn't justify staying. It just you have to understand why people would even join. There has to be good tools. And most of the good tools, like you can find in

books and other leaders that are not culty. Yeah, they're sort of universal and ancient. I mean, some of the stuff is in so many other texts. Do you guys ever find yourself still using nexus techniques? And do you ever like turn to each other when you get into a fine? You're like, babe, let's let's EM that. Like, talk about that. We actually joke about it a lot. Like, we use the language in a joky. She'll get mad at me and I'll be like, I sure life issue. Maybe we need to go visit Keith in prison, hash this one out. Towards the end of the book, you describe a very emotional scene, having lunch with your parents after you made it out, and your mom says she feels like she got her daughter back, and you

ask her why she never tried to pull you out of nexium, and she says, because it was your life, I didn't want to lose you, my connection with you was always the most important thing. Do you think this is why many family members don't try harder to get their loved ones out of cults? Because they know that, I mean, we've done shows on cults before. one of the primary defensive measures cult's take is isolating cult members from people who either aren't in the cult or say negative things about the cult. And I think a lot of parents realize this. And if they don't realize it, they realize it pretty quickly when they say, hey, we think you're

in a cult and you start chanting or singing something on the phone like the Moonies were instructed to do, where they were instructed to do these chants and say, like, you're not my real father, or whatever it is. I mean, I think if my kid was in a cult, I'd be even more scared of pushing them away completely than I would be of them being in the cult itself, potentially. Yeah, I think she did the right thing. And we've subsequently instructed other family members. In fact, Nipi and I are in touch with family and friends of almost everybody who's still loyal except for one person. And that's the advice we give them is like stay close, give them a safe landing pad, don't judge them, don't criticize. I mean, if anything, ask loving questions. And I think my mom knew that. She's, you know,

in the mental health profession. She didn't know the extent of what was happening, but she knew that, you know, he was a megalomaniac and that it was a problem for sure. I'd like to talk about some of the classic cult tactics that Keith used to keep people on the hook, sniffing out their vulnerabilities, leveraging them. One example is punishing people's natural responses and intuition. You sort of alluded to this earlier. The skepticism, retaining personal control, wanting to protect your body, framing things like resistance to a concept as defiance in order to make people people compliant. I mean, it's sort of gaslighting with maybe a fancier label on it. What else happened here? Because I think folks might be wondering, what does this guy say to you to keep you here

or to wrap you up? It doesn't make any sense. I think one of the first things is creating the belief that we found the best thing, which creates an us versus them. So there was a sort of internal righteousness as individuals, but as a collective. So the community that we came to love felt like they'd say things like this is eventually like chosen family. So if anyone was criticizing, that created the isolation. They never said there was never active, like you can't talk to somebody, but it was more like, well, what does it mean if you're communicating with somebody who doesn't support what you do? You almost come to the answer yourself, which is, oh, it means I'm, I've got one, I'm not committed. I've got one foot out or whatever. It was always tacit instructions.

They hold you hostage with your principles in a lot of ways. And they make a question like that will go, well, well, my highest value is X, Y, Z. Obviously, I should do this. But I think it's also case by case. Like, I remember initially with my family, I once or twice chose a nexium event overseeing family, and I got a little pushback from that. And I evaluated it and was like, you know what? This isn't more important in my family. So from that point on, I never let a nexium event take precedent over a family event. And that was my boundary. Which is probably why he stayed orange sash. Yeah. For whatever reason, I like my first. family more than the people in the cult.

Whereas I was more obedient. Okay. Well, I wouldn't even say I wasn't being obedient. They would have said that. Yeah. They would have said Nippie's being defiant. Yeah. They would try to get me to stay and do things and be like, well, what's your highest value?

And I'd be like, my family. Sure. Yeah. And they're like, ooh, wrong answer. Or they'd reframe nexium as your family, right? That was solid in me, I guess. And I think that protected you from future abuse. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. It protected you. Also, yeah, you never made Brown Belt or whatever, Brown said. And that was fine with me. I've been in these groups, not. deep enough at all. I've taken like the intro seminar to some of these things. And I'll, it's funny because these people I had you on Facebook. And a year later or something on their birthday, back when I used to do this, I would check in and say, how are you doing? Happy birthday? What a, and they would, some of them were

still in the group. And it was mind-blowing because I thought, this is such a weird, oppressive group with a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for? A lot of really inappropriate use of influence. And since I'd been studying this stuff, teaching this stuff, doing this podcast for so many years, I remember being like, this is a really creepy way to do the upsell to the advance program. And one of the programs, I don't mind naming, it was called M-I-T-T-T. My opinion is that it was really creepy, and it was also a offshoot of something called Life Spring, which got sued into oblivion back in the day. And I just remember they would say, like, anybody who wants the advanced, go in this other room,

and then there'd be this group of 40 of us left, and that he'd go, come up to the front of the stage. And he'd be like, why is it that you're so resistant to continuing your education with us? and somebody would say, I can't make the dates because it's my best friend's wedding shower or something next weekend. And then the guy would just drill into the, how often do you make excuses to not do things for you, to do things for other people? And she's like, well, this friend actually, I'm kind of on her shit list because I missed other things in her life that were really important for work. Right. And they would go, oh, so your friend doesn't support your work or your personal development?

And I'm sitting there going, no, she's been a shitty friend. she needs to go to this important life event for her other friend, have her go to the one that you're having in a month. And they're reframing it as, this is a bad friend. She's holding you. I'm thinking this person's holding you accountable. And they're like, no, this person's holding you back in life because they don't want to let you go to our $500 weekend long thing.

I'm a jig instead of her freaking wedding shower. Jordan, you just described the exact conversation I had two years in and I didn't go to my best friend's wedding because of Vanguard Week. I was going to leave early. And then they were like, why would you leave early for someone who doesn't support your values? Right. Is she taking trainings with you? Why would you go there?

Same thing. To me, it's crazy. But you, when you're in the room, and they had this poor woman. Of course, she's standing up because he's making her stand. Everyone's staring at her. So she's got all this social pressure. And if you don't agree, you look really bad. There was a doctor in the room who said, I can't make it because I have surgery scheduled.

And it's like, well, you need to take time and do the development for yourself. You're never going to advance in your career as a doctor. And he's like, I'm the chief surgical whatever. at this hospital and I'm the only person who can perform this tonsillate, not even a tonsillectomy. It was like a very serious whatever. It's like taking someone's pancreas out or something. You know, it's like a real thing. And they just kept making this guy look like crap. And they finally were like, you're uncoachable. And he's like, fine, I'm uncoachable. But I have to do this. This is, I'm saving someone's life here. And he walked out. And I remember thinking like,

that guy has the right idea. This is a smart person who wasn't about to take your shit. And they knew that from stage and they kicked him out of the room because they realized, this guy is not going to be pliable. And also, I think there was probably, when you're on stage, maybe you can hear the murmurs of people going, it's a surgery, man. It's important. This guy's a doctor. You know, he had some authority by virtue of his position.

They did not want him in the room for that reason. They want people who are just going to be like drones and listen to anything that's coming from the stage. You really do need a background in influence and persuasion and cults. Otherwise, you just kind of sit there and smart person or not, you just get sucked in. It's really easy to see. 100%. I wish I'd said more things like that doctor.

Knowing what I know, I would mean, obviously, I actually think I wouldn't even gone to the five day because they pressured me with the signing the application to get the discount. And I think I would have said, actually, I feel pressured and I feel like you're using scarcity mentality to get me to commit. And if this is really great, it'll be here when I'm ready. So thanks. But I didn't know that stuff then. But it's so interesting because in the book, Sarah, you,

talk about struggling to engage with one of your early trainings where you guys had to write a personal mission statement or something like that and you broke into a sweat and you say that you struggle to face your personal flaws and you were kind of jarred, I think, by some of the stuff you were confronting about yourself. But as it turns out, the nexium coaches, you said we're looking for your reaction in their eyes, your sensitivity or your resistance to the curriculum actually strengthened your potential as a candidate for being a lifer in ESP, according to that. This is a fascinating paradox, this idea that like your healthy resistance to a curriculum that was ultimately it was questionable was actually an asset. What did they mean by that? Do they mean that you were

an easier mark because you were a thinking person? Or were they trying to lower your guard by saying that your skepticism meant that somehow you would go further in the organization? You know, I don't really know that there's answers that are still out there that I'm still figuring out. I can guess what I know now is that anything that they saw that they could flip for their own benefit, they would. I was a mark for a lot of reasons being a natural recruiter. Like, I have a big network. I'm really passionate about things that I believe in, even like what we're doing now on the other side of it all. I'm still the same person. But I think the fact that I was, like, I was in a meltdown. And I wasn't happy. Like if somebody had said, let's go,

I'll take you to the airport right then. I would have gone. But I had invested and I wanted to get, you know, my money's worth. And I think they just saw dollar signs with me in terms of what I could bring to the company, which I did. Anything I presented, they'd tell me why I was great. Like, they made me very special early on. Lots of love bombing. So they saw that the skepticism that, like, that surgeon at that event might have had, and they maybe were threatened by it or concerned about, but anything that they could use to keep you guys in, they would use. So that just became an asset. I think. I think, I mean, I definitely saw them doing what they did with that surgeon. If people were super resistant to the sashes and they refused to wear them, for example, they'd ask them to leave.

Like, they just weeded out the people who were not compliant right from day one. Also, there's an assumptive manipulation that goes on there that Sarah's going to continue. So they say, oh, your XYZ will allow you to be a great recruiter and you can build a center here. So they're creating the hope. It'd be like me saying your smooth voice will make you a great head trainer. So I'm getting you to picture yourself as a head trainer and I'm planning the idea. And it's all this cultivating kind of mentality they have. Dangling like the carrot of whatever is important for that person.

Based on what I listed about your values, you know, let's say I know you're ambitious to make money, but you can make a lot of money as a head trainer. You know, just little impassing things like that. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guests, Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, please do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our sponsors. Look, all of these folks support the show, they support us.

We'd love it if you'd support them. I know there's a lot of supporting going on. and you can start your support by going to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. That's where you can find any sponsor of the show. You can also search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well. That's at Jordan Harbinger.com right there on the homepage. Thanks again for making the show possible and supporting those who support us. Now for the end of part one with Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames.

How do you think teachers and leaders or these cult leaders figure out which of these techniques to use on which people? You know, how do they know, okay, I need to dangle the carrot of, you know, Gabriel, a lot of powerful Hollywood people, they're in these classes. I mean, that's what Scientology does in some ways, right? They're like, you know, Tom Cruise is always hanging out at the Celebrity Center. Why don't you go to this class there? And you're going to meet a ton of powerful people. And meanwhile, you're like a 26-year-old screenwriter who works at a gym folding towels. And you're like, this is my big break. Okay, the Scientology stuff might be a little weird. But what if I go there and I run into Tom Cruise and all these other important

people that can make it happen for me, which they're saying happens. Like, they're keeping it in the family. I need to be in the family. Let me just fake it till I make it. And then I'll be a rich Hollywood person. And I won't care that I spent 30 grand on auditing alien ghosts or whatever out of my body. How do they figure out which techniques to use on who? Are you writing down things that they use? Yeah, we wrote down our goals. But I'll say this. I don't know that everyone was like, like, if you came into a training Jordan, I wouldn't be like, how are we going to dangle Jordan? You weren't the manipulator, though. You were a good person.

Right. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. So I don't know how rampant that was, except I think it was Keith doing it and Keith getting the flying monkeys to go out and get the information he was trying to elicit. So he was basically outsourcing his manipulation a little bit. Like, for instance, I did it for like two years and then I pieced out because I didn't really see anyone in the organization I looked up to.

I was like, there's no one in this organization that is thriving in their world. This is 2002, whatever. it was brand new, and they were trying to coach me. I had structure. I was going to classes. I was doing my thing. And, you know, acting is something you need to create your own structure to to start having measurements. And I got what I got needed from the organization. And cut two, you know, I get casting something in L.A. I meet Mark Vesente, who had taken a training at that point. And then in 2006, they invite me back to come work on a film that I was going to be in with some other people was going into pre-production and they moved me from Los Angeles, paid for everything,

which was kind of rare in the organization. They didn't do stuff like this. Move my car, move my life. They're paying for my food and everything while I was there for that fall. Film never happens, but I'm back in the community. Oh, tricky, tricky. I still to this day don't know why they targeted me because I was, for all intents. I was, quote, out. I would take a training like once a year maybe because I liked just kind of looking underneath the hood, figuring out how I could be better, but I didn't want to be a part of the organization. I think I know why. Yeah, I was going to say, were you guys together at the time? Because maybe they're like, this is the piece. No, when he, when he came back to do the film is when we met. Okay. Interesting. But we were both dating other people and then we

didn't hook up for a couple years. I think they brought him back because he's a good represent. There's so many women in the company. And I think having a, you know, a handsome dude, like an alpha male who can like stand up in front of a room be like, yeah, this helped me in my life. That's good. You need people on the outside to be the face of it. Maybe. There was no guarantee. I was going to come back and do that. I think that's why they paid for you. That's why they paid for you. Yeah.

They had a plan. Yeah. Nippy, Alpha male square jaw. Perfect example of nexium technology. Devastating good looks. Look at this guy bringing the fire. Speaking of which, though, how do you, how does a cult member negotiate the tension between your impulses, your instincts, and what you're being taught?

Because it sounds like Nippy was like, you know what? This is kind of, I don't need this crap. And then it's like, well, actually, I do. Well, actually, I'm being pressured to feel like I do or whatever it is. So to answer that question, you know, a lot of people say that I'd say that. I want to say that how I was indoctrinated and bought in is different. So my story is distinctly different from the one that you see there. It isn't any less like I knew better and I'm trying to protect myself image because I didn't fall for it. I fell for it hookline and sinker. I just fell for it hook line and sinker in a very

different way. And the one that I found, I relayed to the most. was in Yanya Yalaj's book, Take Back Your Life, where it talks about moral injury. And I was very bought into the notion that we were making an impact and getting people to think critically about things in ways that I felt like world leaders needed to. So I was very kind of altruistic, self-righteous at times, perhaps, about what I thought we were doing. We were never doing that. The moral injury example in the book, I think she cites how a soldier goes over to another

country thinking they're fighting for peace and freedom and finding out that it's a totally different story and they feel that their principles were used against them to accelerate a clandestine agenda. And that's very much how I felt when I found out what was going on. And that moral injury was the thing that I felt like I had to tend to the most when I reconciled what had happened. So it's different in the traditional sense. And I really want to pay attention to like me trying to minimize that I wasn't conned. It was just, I want to emphasize it was different. Because I think that's where the knowledge is. And I think that's where people can get the wisdom out of something like this. One of the core concepts of nexium is the idea of an inner deficiency, which is basically

some specific void within each member. So for Sarah, it looked like the idea was there's something fundamentally wrong with me. And in your view, at least according to some of the things you said before, the belief made you uptight and made you judgmental. There's also this desire to be liked by people, which you'd said drove pretty much everything in your life. What does the organization do with these inner deficiencies? And the second part of this is, are these inner deficiencies real or are they manufactured slash magnified by the organization to get their hooks in and keep them there? Great question. I think this is actually where ESP or Nexiam is very much aligned with Schmandmark and things like that, is that they have to like create a problem within you that you

believe is a real problem and then you want to fix it. And then they present the path to fixing it and you're, and you buy it. We bought in that this is the path. And that this is the path. the only way. So they can't pull that completely out of thin air in terms of a completely made-up problem. I did want people to like me. I don't know. Now I don't really see that as like a major problem. It's like it's a very normal thing that people want to be liked and belong and feel appreciated and validated. Maybe there's like healthier levels versus not healthy levels. But ultimately, I think that's what he did with everyone across the board. We spent way too much time microscoping on feeling like shit about ourselves. And then we're like, I feel like I'm an awful person.

and like I do this and like I got to do a collateral so I don't do this and I and you know we were doing all these exercises and penances and persistencies. Persistencies were like daily commitments to like, you know, doing sit-ups or like working on your taxes or learning Spanish. We were just trying to be better and better and better and better. It's fine if you want to be better, but it's built on this belief that like you're not okay or you're broken or you're there's something wrong with you. So something wrong with you is not completely manufactured because I think many of us in life, whether you're in a cult or not, don't feel worthy or don't feel loved. And that's a very common challenge that people have to overcome in their lives is to learn how to love themselves and not be

looking externally. You know, do you like me? Do you like me? Do you love me? Do you appreciate me? Like, that's, that can be a problem. I think one of the reasons Nexium hooked so many people at a young age is that most 20-year-olds don't love themselves. They don't have a strong relationship with themselves. They don't have a solid sense of self-worth. I think that's a normal thing. but then they turned it into, oh, well, that's just your inner deficiency. So to answer your question, both, it's a real thing, and then it's manufactured and highlighted in order to create a dependency and a hook for the whole path. Does that make sense? It does, and what's sort of insidious here is that everybody is going to have aspects of their

personality that would attract them to a group like nexium. My sense is, okay, a lot of you guys are seekers, you're ambitious, you're curious, you're hungry for community, eager to grow, find more fulfillment. There's not a person listening right now who's like, I don't have any of those qualities, right? Everybody listening, certainly listening to a podcast like this has those, but all humans that have more than two brain cells to rub together have some combination of the qualities that I just mentioned. And all of those needs are legitimate. These are not personal flaws. These are qualities of really good people. And so, in organization, like Nexium, preys on those legitimate needs. And I'm wondering if you think there are other

qualities or other needs that made you and the other victims of this cult vulnerable. For example, in season two, you really do see Nancy Saltzman's personal, and I say innocence, I don't mean like in the eyes of the law because she is in prison, but or was. She was sheltered, really, it seems like, not just by Keith, but just maybe even as a kid, this is all happening under her nose. And here she is all huggy and everything. And it's like, does being sheltered make people vulnerable as well? Because they just don't know how manipulative people or evil people can be. You know, what's going on here? Listen, I can't speak totally for her, but theory that I put together from the vow season two is that she talks about her mom, her mother called her a dummy. Yeah. So in that framework of deficiency, she doesn't feel smart. And Keith gave her a role that gave her a lot of clout as a leader and as a teacher. She was the prefect. She was ahead of a school.

And people look up to her and literally threw flowers at her and just showered her. I believe that there's a certain power that she got from that role. sure she was revered for being smart she was revered yeah in fact i probably revered her more than i revered keith like i had that relationship with her and i think that she enjoyed that and in those terms that would have covered up the inner deficiency yeah right just like she would when i know that she said this about nippy and i when we left they said that when i got married to nippy and had a baby that covered up my inner deficiency that's a crappy thing to say it is a crappy thing to say yeah it's a terrible thing to say and in fact i had so many ems on my attachment to having

children. Like, they would drill you on, like, why do you even want that? Throw into it as well, Jordan, that Nancy, in about three years of the organization starting, is having conversations with Edgar Bronfman, Stephen Cooper, who is the new CEO of Enron, the health security of Mexico. She's sitting down in a very short amount of time with some very powerful people as someone who's esteemed for their intelligence. He ended up meeting with the Dalai Lama. So all these things that are happening to Nancy that wouldn't have happened in her wildest dream, I think we're intoxicating for her. To be fair, and I know I'm talking about somebody who led a cult, so I'm going to, I don't,

I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings here. She comes across is really brilliant, right? The curriculum looks cool. She's very well spoken. I can see how she really was somebody who meant to do well in the beginning at least and get sucked in here. Not that she's blameless or completely a victim of all this and didn't victimize anyone else. That's not for me to say. I agree with you. Yeah. She doesn't come across as some dumbass who can't ever do accomplish anything in life. It's kind of the opposite. It's really sad that this is how she ended up spending, that she's going to lose a bunch of years of her life in prison and her parents, possibly, at least one of them has passed away while she was in, I mean, it's just, it's heartbreaking.

It's really tragic. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. And you can tell in the vow, she feels really bad about a lot of this. I mean, just terrible, not just getting caught, but she just, like, she's looking back and going, was I just a tool that he used to create something that he could use to bang underage girls. I mean, she didn't phrase it that way, but she really is struggling. She might as well have done that. She actually said something really interesting about Keith. Let me find it in my notes. Gabriel, you know what I'm talking about with the water bottle? Yeah. She holds up a bottle of water. She's being interviewed. She says, this bottle of water is very valuable to me right now because I'm thirsty and there's water in it. But once I'm done, I just turn around and put it down. I walk away and I

forget about it. And that's how Keith Ranieri treated everyone in the organization and how he treated people. And I wrote that down and rewound it and paused it because I thought, this is so interesting because that really is how a sociopathic victimizer looks at other people, right? These people are here for me to use as tools. And in the moment, they're the only thing in my world and I can focus on them and make them feel really special and do whatever I need to manipulate them. But when I'm done, I mean, who gives a shit? If they go, if they get run over by a truck, as soon as I turn my back, I'm not going to, I'm not going to scrape them off the road because I'm done. I'm finished with them. I said, in order to be able to do that, you cannot have a conscience, I think. Right.

Of course. Yeah. I was just going to say, ironically, it's the opposite of being a humanitarian. Yeah, it is the opposite of being humanitarian. You're just a person who's using people for their own ends, full stop. It's something that really gnaws at my subconscious as well. The manipulation here is always so unfortunately familiar, right? There's the idea of being at cause. This was also a thing in the intro self-help creepy group that I went to the intro seminar. The at-cause, right? Everything in your life, you're responsible for creating it. And if you ask, which I did, what about children who are starving in Africa?

It's like, you're just doing this to be difficult. And it's like, then I got kind of almost shunned and disciplined for asking, what about kids who get leukemia? Because they're like, you're just picking an example that's going to discredit the leader here and the message. and you're trying to find something wrong with it. And it's like, okay, so I found something legitimately that pokes a hole in what you're saying. And now I'm deliberately trying to disrupt the class with this example.

It's like, wait a minute, though. Jordan, if you had been in an axiom class, it would have sounded more like, as an interesting example, Jordan, why do you feel the need to find a counter example versus looking how this applies in your life? Yeah, that's basically what it was, except they were angry with me.

It's a nice way of doing it. We were more gentle with the gas lighting. We were like more subtle. You know, that also makes sense, because this is a huge group that was probably 200 people in the room. So I think they wanted to get rid of, they were filtered. The first intro thing was probably get rid of anybody who's going to put up any sort of resistance and be difficult.

Whereas with Nexium later on, especially in the smaller classes, it's like, no, no, no, if you're going to pay $8,000 to be here for two weeks or whatever it is, we want to keep you in. So we're going to maybe kid glove you a little over here and try and make you fit. Whereas this was more like, all right, we're going to get 200 people in here. We want 150 people to sign up for the next. thing and 100 people from that to go on to the super expensive stuff, everybody else can get the hell out of here. Anybody who complains about us staying here till 3 o'clock in the morning can

go home. Anybody who's got to do surgery in the morning can go home. Anybody who's going to find a counter example and try to apply logic can get the hell out of here. It's a filtering process. I think they all do that. And it's funny you said that about the personal responsibility because Lifstream and Scientology and S landmark and NXEM, it all comes from the same shit. That is a main tenant that I see throughout at all, personal responsibility, being at cause. And the problem is that there's truth in it. Something happens in your life. Something bad happens in your life.

You can go, oh, this always happens to me and complain and whine. Or you can go, okay, how did I participate in this? Like, what expectations did I not, you know, was I not aware of that brought me here? Which can be really helpful if you want to have more potency and not make the same mistake again. But if you are being victimized or someone's lying to you or conning you, it doesn't apply. It's a self-protective mechanism of these groups because they can abuse you. And if you put up any fight or any question, it can always be flipped back at, well, how did you cause it? Right.

Or in Scientology terms, how did you bring it in? How did you author it? It's also done normally under certain premises that you didn't know you agreed to or you forget agreeing to, right? So you come in, you go, well, do you see how you authored it? Well, kind of, but like because I've agreed to this process of accountability, I'm now forced to go, okay, well, I got to come up with how I authored it. And I got to come up with how I offered it to end this conversation and go home. So, like, you know, I want to get out. Okay, yeah, I can see how I did it.

And then the gaslighting, the subtle gas lighting has taken effect. And then eventually you're doing it to yourself. Once again, special thanks to Peloton for sponsoring this episode of the Jordan Harbinger show. We really appreciate your support. I wanted to give you a preview of one of my favorite stories from an earlier episode of the show. Megan Phelps Roper, she used to belong to one of the most hateful religious cults in America, the Westboro Baptist Church. She was born into this church, and she later escaped. To hear her tell the story firsthand, it's really incredible. I started protesting when I was five years

old, but even at that first picket, there was a sign that said, gays are worthy of death. So God hates facts is what Westbro's message that we became known for. We were the good guys, and everyone outside the church was evil and going to hell, and we had the only message that would bring the world any hope. We had to go and warn people. These terrible things are happening. And if you want this pain to stop, then you have to change because God isn't going to change. After the September 11 attacks, we had the sign that said, thank God for September 11. What were we thinking? This massive crowd comes down. We were at this corner of this intersection of these three streets. By the time they actually reached us, we're just enraged. There was no space between us.

and them. It got really dicey. One of my cousins gave his signs to somebody else and started standing on top of a trash can pretending like he wasn't with us. They were, again, incredibly intense because obviously the circumstances are so sobering. It brings me incredible sadness to think about now. I can't do this forever. My family, they would refuse to have any contact with me at all once I left. Somebody that we had confided in, sent a letter to my parents and told them that we were planning to leave. And then that email. came in and we left. For more with Megan, including the details of her harrowing experience and escape,

check out episode 302 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's it for part one, part two in a couple days here, transcripts in the show notes, videos on YouTube, advertisers, deals, and discount codes, all at Jordan Harbinger.com Slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me right there on LinkedIn. in, I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using software,

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