Was I In A Cult? - Children of God PT2: "Witnessing... But With Chicken"

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Daniella Mestyanek Young was born three generations deep into the Children of God and today, she finally gets out.  At 15-years-old, she lands in Texas with no real education, no money and no friggin' idea how life on the outside works.  But true to form, she badasses her way through it. And excels.  Somehow, the girl who escaped one extreme, hierarchical world becomes an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, deploys to Afghanistan, and helps make history for women in combat. But on her very first day of basic training she thinks:  "Oh... I've joined another cult."   Part Two of Daniella's incredible story is about what happens after you escape. Because getting out of a cult is one thing. Figuring out who the hell you are once you're free is another. _________ FOLLOW DANIELLAHer website → Knitting Cult Lady Instagram → @daniellamyoung_ YouTube → @KnittingCultLady Her books, Uncultured and The Culting of America → here FOLLOW US Instagram → @wasiinacult TikTok → @wasiinacult SUPPORT THE SHOW Join our Patreon! Ad-free episodes, bonus content, behind-the-scenes conversations, and our forever gratitude. HAVE A CULTY STORY? Email us → [e-mail] SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Boll & Branch makes organic cotton sheets woven to keep you cool all night. 15% off plus free shipping → bollandbranch.com/cult, code: CULT   Quince makes elevated everyday essentials at 50-80% less than similar brands. Free shipping and 365-day returns → quince.com/cult

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Lipson or its affiliates. Guest accounts or personal recollections shared from their own perspectives. References to specific individuals, organizations, or groups are presented as commentary, opinion, and personal experience and should not be interpreted as definitive statement of fact. This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. What I think is very cool about, deconstruction, because deconstruction sucks. Like, you're going to spend a decade just sucking. Just physical trauma, mental trauma, so much going on.

But when you're on the other side of it, you get to use all of your skills. You get to tell all of your stories, right? There is no more secrets and shame and any of that, right? It is yours to do what you want with it. I love what Daniela says right there. Once you get on the other side of deconstruction, you get to tell your story. And for our guests, you get to tell your story on this show. That's right.

To the world. To the world, you get to tell your story. At least a lot of the world. Australia. I checked. We have listeners in like Benelux, I think. There you go. There is some listeners.

One person in Egypt listens to our. our show. Just one. It's basically America and Australia. Really. Like, Australians, for some reason, go Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oyo,oy. There you go.

Thank you, Liz. Welcome back to Ozzy and a cult. I'm Tyler Mason. And over here, I'm Liz Ayakousy. And today is part two of Daniela Messianic Young's incredible story. A story which includes her growing up in the disgustingly heinous God awful called the Children of God, as well as her time in the United States Army,

just crushing, cruising, cruising around Afghanistan like a camel-clad boss. All the way up to today, where she now holds a master's degree in industrial and organizational psychology from Harvard, go Crimson. And an author of two books and a very exciting new project that I'm not going to spoil here. here, she'll tell us about it. And it's pretty much confirmation of badassery.

Now, before we dive into her incredible story, we have to tell you what happened to us this week, or last week, on Spotify. It's still there, Tyler. God damn it. What's happening with Spotify? We now have 50 comments. 50. It's like six times our listeners.

Okay. So this week. We had a very almost comedic thing happen. On Spotify, sometimes it says if you like this show, you might like this other show, and it puts it into our feed, our show's feed. And it recommends other podcasts to you guys. This week on our feed, we got a, you might also like the podcast, Girls Gone Bible. Girls Gone What, Liz?

Girls Gone Bible. Girls Gone Bible. Okay? Would you like me to just read the description? I'm seeing it's hosted by two women who discuss all things Jesus, all things life, a couple of imperfect girls serving an absolutely perfect God. Yeah. So this falls into our show.

Like read the room, Spotify. They don't read the room. It's all an algorithm. them. Nobody's there looking at this thing. But I brought it up because I have to just give some props to our listeners because I started reading the comments and they're actually pure gold. Please. So Benner says, did a cult hack your Spotify guys?

Tricia said, no thanks. You might also like, quote, no, I won't. this one. How do I block this? I want to hear about cults, not join one. Yes. This seems like a weird recommendation. This one is my favorite.

Maybe this is a Girls Gone Bible cry for help. Girls upload another episode if you're trapped in a cult and need help. I love our listeners. I love you guys. I know. They're so funny. You have the same mentality and sense of humor that we do. Lily just says WTF.

The Mr. Poop says, fine, I'll convert. Sorry to lose you, Mr. Poop. Absolutely terrible prank. Or did a cult hack the podcast. How do I rid my brain of the first 30 seconds of this? Somebody listened to it. I heard thinking it was a long episode intro. I'm so sorry.

The cults have finally started the revenge era. Yikes. That's our. hard pass. Are you cult checking us? Am I hallucinating? Absolutely not. Is this satire? Liz, Tyler, get back here and explain yourselves. You guys, it's a test. Nobody fail now. In all caps. That's right. That's right. We're trying to slip a fastball past you. L-O-L-L-O-L-W-the-F-F-E-Q, which I hadn't seen that very cool spelling. What the fuck?

What is this? What the fuck is this? Legitimately, what is this? I thought it may be satire, but I kept skipping through and nope. They listened. They listened. I love our listeners. I'm sorry, guys.

We apologize for this. How, guys? What is happening? Why are you promoting this? Are you guys okay? We can't read every fucking one. I know. We've got to get to the story.

Oh my God, it just goes on and on and on. Wait, this is my, I have to say my last one. This is my favorite. Okay. What the fuck, no thank you. What made anyone think a cult show would make us want to join a cult? Yes. What happened is, I think, isn't it true that you?

I will tell their story. It's me, I will take full responsibility here. So, guys, like I said, Tyler and I get to go through and approve the categories for which podcasts appear on our feed. Well, I went through one hot summer day, and I went through all the categories I approve. Oh, no. Well, turns out all the categories I approved were actually the categories I was excluding. Yeah.

Therefore, sex cult math, the ones that I didn't approve were the ones that I accidentally did approve. So I think like the only ones left in the bunch were like, Religion, spirituality. Right-wing politics. And an en massephere. It's good. Good, Liz. Good work.

You're in charge of that department henceforth. This is why, folks, we had Girls Gone Bible talking about a perfect God. It's my fault. We apologize. Thank you for giving such wonderful responses. Thank you for your. comedic gold and making me laugh. Also, it's supposed to be off by now, and I'm actually quite pissed that it's still on our feed. But anyway, at least it gives us some more funny

comment. So, let's get to some non-perfect God stories, shall we? So for today's story, before we give it back to Danielo, we are just going to give you a quick recap of what happened last week in case you missed it. But also, if you missed it, go back. Start there, obviously. I was born three generations into the children of God cult. My mom was born and raised in the cult. Her dad was one of the main financiers of the cults. And when she was 13, David Berg summons 14 daughters of his leaders, then he married them. That was the thing they tried to call free love. So she's pregnant at the age of 15. So I was born in the Philippines, then I was in Japan, and then I was in Peru, and then we were in Brazil.

The Children of God produced videos, taped CDs. My dad made music for the cult. I was working as a child actress in all of these videos, and the Children of God created their army of about 7,000 children. We were physical labor in the cult. We had a lot of abuse. It was just such a consistent part of life. When the leader dies, his wife, she and. introduces a doctrine that I just describe as spiritual orgies where the adults aren't making love to Jesus.

Everyone was having sex with everyone. So the children just belonged to whatever family the mother was in. It was so well known who my father was. Everybody knew that I was his kid except me. It just confirmed, yep, I'm getting out of here as soon as I can. And there is where we left off. So at 12 years, years old, her mother in passing mentioned a sister that Daniela never knew was her sister. Don't try to explain it again, Tyler. Yeah, I know. I really am still flunking in sex cult math. I crammed the finals. Got a C-minus. Okay, so basically until the age of 12, Daniela thought her stepfather was her biological father.

Okay, then she finds out her actual biological father is a much older man living on a different commune and a completely different country and that all of his many children weren't just her cult family, they were her actual siblings. Here's the kicker. Everyone around Danielle and knew this fact. She just happened to be the only one who didn't. I got to be honest, I'm still, I'm still lost. Do I carry the three? Is it divided by father equals sister? Equals half sibling. Minus step-siblings plus stepfather that left at five. It's all very confusing, yes. And I come from a polygamous background.

This is basically part of my genes as well. Kettle black much, Tyler. We're just going to move on from this. So where we left you last week, Daniela was still living in the Children of God commune in Brazil. My mom was unhappy in the commune. in Brazil. So my mother made an entire plan that she was going to move with her then six children to China. So the cult leadership ends up saying we cannot move to China because my father's

illustrating job is too important and, you know, it's too sensitive to do over the internet. So we end up being sent to Mexico. The head of that commune has a heart attack, so that falls through. And so we are just like, okay, we're going to San Diego. And one of the communes there let us stay. San Diego. The Wales Vagina. Wells Vigina. It's not exactly China, but they do share the same ocean.

And weirdly, I don't know if you know this Tyler, they both have an active surf culture. Did you know that? I did not. I didn't know. Hainan is sometimes even called the Chinese Hawaii. Okay. And since we're making these Chinese, China-San Diego connection.

San Diego has also been one of China's major panda conservation partner since the 1990s. So she didn't make it to China. But she did make it to one of only two places in America, currently babysitting China's pandas. Oh, they're so cute. I want one. They're so cute. So, yeah, so I'm growing up mostly in Brazil.

When I'm 14, we come to America for the first time. and that was the craziest culture shock I've ever had was arriving in my own country because I had never been. I had never even been in a place where everyone spoke English. And there weren't very many children of God folks in America because Berg had told everyone to get out of America in the 70s. Ah, yes, we did an entire episode on this actually. Yes, we did. It was a Christmas episode.

Berg's Christmas Monster. I remember there was a lot of good music in it. A lot of crazy music, though. So, in 1973, Berg announced that the impending comic Cahotech, or what he called the Christmas Monster, was a warning from God and that the United States would be destroyed. Cold members even demonstrated at the United Nations building in New York to warn people about the impending and soon coming end time.

Sound the alarm. And this was perfect timing for Berg, because the year before, he had already ordered his followers to flee America and what he called the Great Escape. By the time Cahotech showed up, most of them were already scattered around Europe and the rest of the world. So now there's a giant comet in the sky. It's basically saying, see, Daddy Berg was correct. And to be fair, this comet was mightily anticipated across the world. It was hyped as the comage of the century. It was meant to outshine Haley.

There was a lot of press around it, a lot of things happening, a lot of songs written about it, as you will discover, when you listen to the episode. In fact, the Queen Elizabeth II, any relation, Liz? Queen Elizabeth, no? Unfortunately not, no. The Queen Elizabeth two even sailed from New York on a three-day comet-watching cruise. Nearly 1,700 people bought tickets, and on board was Lubis Kohotak, the Czech astronomer, who discovered the country. comet. He wanted front row seats to his comet. But guess what? America was not destroyed. We were so close. We were so close. We're handling that just fine on our own without any astronomical

assistance. Thank you very much. Yes, we've got that handled. Thank you. And the comet at the time was a major letdown for the American people. It was very anticlimactic. Sort of like the Jake Paul, Mike Tyson fight. I didn't watch it, but apparently the comet was barely visible to the naked eye. Sort of like Howard Stern's dick. I suppose.

That is according to him. He does make that joke, doesn't he? He does often. Talk about his little tiny penis. And even the man who discovered Kohotech wasn't sure he actually saw Kohotech. 17 people sailed into the Atlantic for the comet of the century

and got an exclusive three-day presentation of fluffy clouds. I think that's actually just a cumulonimbus. Imagine being him. Right. He's on a boat, trapped with 1,700 people. No way to escape. Where's your comet, man?

You promised us a comet. Champagne, anyone. So either the comet was the end of the world or, or it was just very conveniently timed for a man who had already left America and had been telling his followers to do so. for years. And the mounting investigations and public scrutiny had nothing to do with him getting hundreds of people to flee America

because of a comment, supposedly. But we digress. So here is Danielle, now in her own country for the very first time. So we had this experience of being in the U.S. for about eight months, and during that time, 9-11 happens. and that is, by the way, the first time I ever saw live news on television. I actually remember having to comprehend what live news was. My first question was like, why are we watching a movie at 8 o'clock in the morning?

You know, we're watching this horrific thing happen, but the adults are kind of like praising God for his judgment, talking about the end time has arrived. And when evangelicals talk about the apocalypse, they're excited about it. They want it to come. They want the wrath of God to be rained down. And I just remember it felt really gross because you're watching carnage. And then they start talking on television about the religious extremists.

And that was when my 14-year-old brain goes, you know, are we religious extremists? Like, are we that also because we are here celebrating almost? I mean, that day was two of my siblings' birthdays. And like, we had a party that night. We had cake. Definitely on 9-11 was when I started to question, are they the bad guys, right? Are we the baddies? Because before that, I always just thought it wasn't for me.

But that was when I started to be like, no, I don't think we're good people. I don't think we're actually missionaries. We pretend missionary work so that we can get photos, but most of the money and goods that are donated, we keep. That was my first, I think, big crack. I enjoyed being in San Diego. It was a good time. And then eight months later, we got ripped out to go to a pretty awful commune in Mexico with a very abusive man. And I was starting to get desperate at the age of 15 as well because at 16 was when you became a full adult.

And so at 16, you were expected to just start having sex with anyone who requested it or told them that Jesus said that they should. We didn't have birth control. So I was worried about being pregnant and I thought a lot about leaving because I always wondered why my mom didn't leave. But my answer was like, by the time she was 15, she had a baby and she was living on the other side of the world and had no money and what would she have done. And I was kind of in this same boat. And so I just thought I was stuck until I was 18. And I was trying as hard as possible not to play their game. Just another reason, cults withhold education.

Because if you don't have skills or knowledge or any of the things you need for survival on the outside, leaving becomes obviously that much harder, even when you desperately want to get out. It's the cult's invisible prison. And like most every cult, children of God made leaving incredibly difficult. I mean, they're not just going to let their little free labor force walk, are they? No, they don't want to get rid of those soldiers so easily. Unpaid soldiers. So if walking out of the front door isn't really an option, sometimes you have to find

another option. Yeah, the non-door option. The wall option. So you have to like really do something bad, which for us was fellowship with the unbeliever, right? So sex with an outsider was an excommunical offense. And so I literally as dramatic as you can climbed over the commune wall and went out to see a boy.

And I was caught because I fell asleep and didn't sneak back in. It was all first of sorts for me, you know, I think taking my life into my own hands in a way. So then I, you know, come back and I'm like, slam the door and I'm like, I want to leave the family, which is, you know, the only time I ever acted like a real teenager. And so it was like I resigned in lieu of excommunication, but I would have been excommunicated. And the cult will forgive any sin except the sin of leaving. They say, like, if they think there's a chance to save you, they will try, and exorcisms are not fun. So that happens. I'm basically imprisoned in my room for six weeks while they decide what to do with me unless they need me to cook.

I was presented with a bunch of young women leaders who were sort of telling me that I did have a choice. I could choose to humble myself. And they had this whole process. they called partial excommunication. But basically for the next six months, you're back to the lowest rank of the cult. You're doing all this extra labor, extra indoctrination,

you're begging everyone's and God's forgiveness. And then once you prove yourself, you can have a new shot. And I was considering it because I was 15 and being faced with losing literally everything in my life, experts have said that leaving a cult

or high control group is like as close to death as we can probably imagine. And so I was wavering, and this is when my mom, who was also born and raised in the cult, pregnant with me by 14, takes me on a walk outside the commune, and it's just like, go, just go. You know, she's like, we found a situation for you. And I asked her later why she did that.

And she was like, I just, I could see how unhappy you were. And I think that's one of the things about looking at pictures of yourself when you're a child in these high control environments. And it's like, we don't look happy. How do our parents and our people that are supposed to care about us not notice that we look this disconnected and this unhappy? Fortunately, my mom noticed and gave me the nudge that I needed to get out of there. And I can't help but wonder if some part of her mother saw herself at 15

and saw the chance for Daniela to have the life that she never was able to have. So Daniela leaves alone. She leaves her siblings, her mom, and everyone she knew and loved. And then I am taken on a bus from Guadalajara, Mexico, to Houston, Texas, and dropped off with an older step-sister of mine, who I did not know, who had recently left a few years before, and had very graciously agreed to take on a teenager, which I'm so grateful for. but she was working nights at a bar full-time,

struggling to establish herself in the world, mostly staying across town with a boyfriend. So I was just living in an apartment on my own from the age of 15 on. And so I end up at Chick-fil-A being their sample girl, just witnessing but with chicken. Can that please be the title of this episode? Witnessing, but with chicken.

I mean, no one will get it on first read, but yeah, sure, we'll think about it. We'll take it to committee. Great. And then I got dropped into, I mean, a high school was 4,000 students of it, six weeks before the end of sophomore year when I had never been in school a day in my life. We show up with my sister and her boyfriend and I was like, okay, we need to enroll a new student. I literally had like a passport and a social security card. I'd never had a vaccination.

I had never had a single school. or day in school, nothing. Here's my passport. Here's my social card. Here's where I live. And the school secretary literally looked at me and was like, I can't enroll you in school because you don't exist. So yeah.

Dougie, my sister's boyfriend, was like, no. Wrong answer. She is a child. She lives in this district. You will put her in school. Remember, Danielle had never spent one single day in an actual school. Education inside children of God was centered on cult material. And according to Berg, conventional schooling was basically pointless because Jesus was coming back.

Any day now. Yeah, any day now. Any hour, any minute. I mean, what time is it? Girls Gone Bible. Could you help us out with this? It's Jesus time. It's got to be in there somewhere.

Oh, wait, I look. Oh, Cahotech, it's a comet. It's Jesus. Oh, no. No. It's just how we're. It turns big. Danielle was not just thrown into the mean girl hellscape of a 4,000 student Houston High School,

but straight into the academic deep end. Our history classes were David Berg wrote a book called 7,000 years of world history, where he put down his version of world history. And that's what we studied and copied from. And that was all of the history that I knew when I had to take two history tests in high school. Just in case it needs to be said on air, on a microphone, by me, the Earth is older than 7,000 years. Yes, the Earth is about $4.54 billion with a B. billion years old, that's old.

Just a few months longer than 7,000 years. Right, but this premise, and again, the Girl's Gone Bible will tell you all about this. You've got to stop promoting this horrible podcast. The premise is that the earth is 7,000 years old is actually quite a common belief, vomited by religious groups. It comes from treating the Bible as a literal, continuous, timeline. You see, the book of Genesis gives the ages of early patriarchs. I mean, Adam was supposedly 130 years old when Seth was born, Seth was 105, when Enis was born, and so on.

And so Bible literists add these ages together. They connect them to later kings and historical events, and they count forward to the present, 7,000 years. Which is just fascinating. It's just stupid. It's really just stupid. I mean, 7,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had already been on Earth for roughly 300,000 years. That's a long time. Seven thousand years ago, the Earth wasn't being formed. Humans were farming. They were building homes. They were working with metal. In fact, they were making wine. Wine, for fuck's sake, is older than 7,000 years. Wine is older than Berg's Earth. True. The oldest evidence we have for wine is around 6,000 BCE. In what's now the country of Georgia.

So, you know, call it 8,000 years. So 8,000 years ago, some Neolithic farmer could finish a hard day's work with a glass of good old Cabinet on a planet that, according to Burke, did not exist yet. What cheese would pair with an 8,000-year-old Cabernet? Like a big fatberry.

Yeah, or maybe a 6,000-year-old Gouda. But Berg's version, 7,000 years of world history wasn't just bad history, guys. His timeline met humanity was nearing the end of its allotted six millennia. Yeah, folks, you guessed it correctly. Sing it for us, Girls Gone Bible.

Jesus was coming back. Jesus was coming back. I do not get that stuck on my head, please. But look, but just keep this in mind, right? This isn't just Berg and his cultic craziness. Many cult leaders preach this. And so currently does Ken Ham. In fact, many Baptist preachers talk about this.

Seventh-day Adventists still believe this. Some Orthodox Jewish leaders and even my man, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormon Church, he wrote in Doctrine and Covenant 77 that the earth was temporally only 7,000 years old. Mormon, she still kind of believes that. And why cult leaders love this idea is, to us, of course, pretty obvious. It turns history into a countdown clock with an impending end date happening any fucking day now.

So, no, the earth is not 7,000 years old, but one can imagine that the first high school history test for Daniela because of this was quite challenging. But true to form, Danielle bad-assed her way through it all. Yes, she did. And I had to work and support myself. So all I did was school and work. And then I had to, in two years, get enough credits to graduate with my class. And I did all of it. I went to college.

I went to the University of Texas at Dallas. Go Comets. University of Texas at Dallas, the Comets. fittingly, in some ways, their mascot is Timok, which is Comets spelled backwards. Why not Cahotech? That should be their mascot.

Missed opportunity there, UTD. And then again, in college, you know, I threw myself into it with what I now know is this cult baby zeal of I have to be perfect, which is so interesting because so much of what happens to us in cults

teaches us a lot of really good skills. you know, but then it's just about like learning to use them deliberately. So actually the ability to just push through whatever, that is hard. That I think is the skill that cult babies and veterans both have because we have to. And not to toot her own horn,

but I got to say, her horn deserves some tooting right here so we're going toot it. Danielle went. From never a day of the school, I graduated with 4.0, spoke as the valedictorian, and worked between one and four jobs. So when I even look back at that time, I'm like, I put myself in my own sort of high control, high demand environment where I just had to go one thing to the next and didn't have any time to think. I felt like after six years of being out in

the greater world, having to make all my own decisions and do everything, even though I was still within the college structure. I was so excited to join the Army. I was literally looking forward to a summer and basic training where all you have to do to be successful is be in the right place, at the right time, in the right uniform,

and don't volunteer for anything. Don't stand out. All right, and I was like, three months of not having to think, sounds amazing. And on that thought, we'll be right back. And we are B-A-C-K.

That's back, Liz. I can tell from your blank stare. It's back, BACK. Thank you. We are back, and this is where Danielle enlists in the United States Army. The Army has all these programs where they can bring you in as an officer. And the lowest rank of that is if you have a degree, any degree, you can apply to be a military officer. And so U.S. Army took me, no questions.

This is 2009 right at the beginning of the surge of additional troops in a military officer. Afghanistan. And Daniela joined at a moment when the United States Army needed humans. It needed bodies to be shot at badly. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had put enormous strain on the force, and in 2009, the Pentagon had sent tens of thousands of additional troops towards Afghanistan. But it was also the bottom of the recession. It was the best recruiting year the Army had had in years. Not because anyone wanted to go to war, there just were no other jobs. Nope. Even chicken witnessing was going to folks with four-year degrees. Sometimes I think the military is like the modern day version of the circus.

Kids who don't fit in their small towns run off and join the military. And it can be very comforting, right? Like you're taught a language. You're given a rank structure. You're given a uniform to wear every day, which is, you know, until you're worn a uniform every day, you don't realize how much time you spend dressing yourself. first of all, my first day of basic training, I was like, oh, this is a cult. I've just joined another cult. And honestly, my second thought was like, okay, I'm going to be better at this than

the rest of these suckers, right? Because I know how to do this. I know how to just go into group mode. For example, the number one thing that everyone complained about in basic training was lack of privacy, which is legit. It's the buddy system is a. way to break you down. It is a brainwashing tactic. Denying people privacy, constant surveillance is one of the fastest ways to break people. But it barely phased me because I never even gone outside of the commune walls alone until I was almost 16 years old. So lack of privacy to me was nothing. And one thing that the cult baby can do is outwork everyone else. So this is what I do. And the U.S. Army has one thing they love about you more than anything else. Run fast. If you can run fast,

that's the thing they've chosen to judge people on. You are considered golden. And so I ran really, really fast and I just threw myself at it and ultimately would run a 515 mile. Okay, real quick, a 5.15 mile is crazy. Yeah, it is. That's pretty good. That's like varsity high school track. Yeah. She said that she had to give up smoking a pack and a half a day to get there. She's also insane. Yeah. That's like driving when your car goes like 11.5 miles an hour. That's basically how fast she was running. That's pretty fast. I mean, I was a runner. I actually, I was a really good runner. And mine is sub five. I went to state. And I ran 800 meters and one five nine back in high school. So I kind of had a gift for that running.

This is about Daniela, and for context... It's good. I'm not taking anything away from her. That's a hell of a run. Well, back when she was in the Army, in order to get like a perfect score on the Army's own two-mile run test, they do that.

For a woman, Daniela's age, she needed to average about a 7.48 mile pace. Well, she went a little bit faster than that. Yep, she did very well. We're very proud of you. She was apparently trying to become the valedictorian of the United States Army as well. So I ran my way into military intelligence. And then I ended up more by luck and timing than anything else being one of the first women to be on a deliberate mixed gender ground combat team.

So in 2011, this was like the height of we're going to win the hearts and minds, right, of the Afghan people. traditional Muslim society, you need women there to basically conduct search and seizure of their women, if you're trying to be respectful. And this has to happen now. And the army was not prepared. And so it ended up just being, as we say, Voluntold, you're here, you're in shape. Go try out for the team. Voluntold. That could also be a great title for this episode, Tyler. We have two of them to choose from now. I love it. Yeah, nothing says freedom like removing the choice. Right.

And within three months, it became so obvious that we need women and women's perspectives in this fight that they had set up a selection to essentially replicate special forces quickly for women to get some training and then get sent out on these teams. So I say, you know, for 243 years, we asked the question, are women good enough to be men? and what we actually figured out is that when both men and women are trying to kill you, it's a good idea to have both men and women

on your team trying to stay alive. It's just perspective. As a soldier who was kind of a kick-butt soldier and who eventually I meet the president, I got a volunteer medal from President Obama and like did cool things, made history for women, and is like, look, allowing women into combat arms

makes all women in the military safer because taking a population, which is programmed to conduct violence on behalf of state, and then telling them that this small percentage of people is not as good as them, like predictably leads to bad things. And I think that so often, especially when you are talking about high control groups, they want you to choose, right? Is this a good experience or bad experience? It's cool.

Like, women doing kick-ass things is cool. And changing the army for all women is. school and also rape culture. Let's talk about all of it. And also rape culture. Continue. And in fact, when I got assaulted about halfway through my deployment, after being warned that I would probably be raped on my deployment, and then just told to, again, watch my back, you know, which is part of the culture. One of the things I parallel in the memoir is as kids, we are pulling each other aside and talking about which ones are the creepy uncles, you know, and as women, we are expected to not get raped. One of the feelings I had was, well, at least it's

over, right? At least it already happened as though that's the way it works, right? But it was like, is thinking about every day patrolling yourself home at night ready to shoot a fellow American soldier and thinking about it all the time. And Daniela is far from the only woman in the military thinking about this constantly. According to the military's own 2025 numbers, nearly one in 23 active duty women experienced unwanted sexual contact the previous year. One in 23 comes to about 9,800 women. And nearly 40,000 active duty women experienced sexual horrendous. So just to translate the Pentagon's language here, unwanted sexual contact is basically their umbrella term for sexual assault, which includes everything from non-consensual sexual touching to forced sex acts and rape and attempted rape.

And then there's sexual harassment, which is the Pentagon's language for things like making comments, sexual comments about your body, asking about your sex life. sending or, you know, showing sex pictures or videos, repeatedly hitting on you after you've made it clear that you're not interested. Making sexual gestures, touching you in ways that make you feel uncomfortable. Making you feel like your job or promotion or treatment at work depends on whether you do sexual things like this. 40,000. Enlisted military women experienced that. That's just the ones who, of course, mentioned it.

I just want to reiterate that these are their own. numbers coming directly from within. That's gross. This is gross. You got to do better, Uncle Sam. And you know what? Daniela spent her entire childhood dodging creepy uncles. She didn't need to dodge Uncle Sam while she was a trained member of the military. Yeah, hey, Uncle Sam, I want you to stop raping women in the military. Who's joining my militia? I mean, in this situation, I unfortunately didn't even report it because I was breaking the rules at the time. And that's all they would have cared about, right? It would have destroyed my career in order to report it because they ban sex on a deployment.

Right. And one of the ways they do that is by saying men and women can't be together alone. And, you know, it is interesting because it wasn't until I was writing uncultured that I realized, like, he knew that too. He knew I was the one that was going to have all of the negative effects from it. This is one of the policies they've done in the military. They have safe laws where if you're reporting an assault, you can't be punished for any sort of lesser crime. And this is intended to protect 18, 19, 20-year-olds in the barracks who get assaulted

and then are told they can't report it. Or if they do report it, they will be the ones prosecuted because they were drinking underage. So the Pentagon estimates that only about one third of sexual assaults were reported to a defense department authority. Okay, so the Pentagon is reporting this, but what the hell are they doing about it? Okay, so I must mention that there has been some progress. After years of sexual assault scandals and enormous public and congressional pressure, a law was finally changed by Congress. So until the end of 2023, Tyler, commanders could decide whether sex.

sexual assault cases got prosecuted. Understand what that means? Mm-hmm. Now that decision, rightfully, goes to specially trained military prosecutors that are outside the normal chain of command. Okay, so wait. So before 2023, which was basically yesterday, if a guy in your unit sexually assaults you, the people deciding whether he got prosecuted could literally be his friend, monkmate, someone

who trusted him, maybe deployed with him, or promoted him. even. Correct. And in the military's own 2021 survey, almost half of the women who didn't report an assault said that they were worried about what their fellow service members would do to them if they did. And more than half of those women also said they didn't think anything would be done anyway. So why reporting? Didn't even think anything would be done. That is such a problem. So you're right. And now you're not just scared to report it because you think people won't believe you and victim blame you. But you're scared reporting it could actually destroy your life instead of his. Exactly. You report Steve for assaulting you and suddenly you're the problem. The military's own

surveys found that women who reported assaults were then ostracized, mistreated, sometimes retaliated against. People stop talking to you. Career opportunities disappear. Leadership starts making your working life miserable and you have to show up every day. to work and see Corporal Steve everywhere you go. Yeah. Just corporaling about. Just saluting and goose stepping or whatever. I mean, this is kind of like when you point out bad behavior in a cult and suddenly,

well, you're the problem. Sort of like that. Yeah, it's very interesting. Now since 2023, things are moving in a better direction, according to the Pentagon's own surveys. In 2023, about 6.8% of active duty women were estimated to have experienced sexual assault. And in 2025, as we just mentioned, that number has dropped to 4.3%. Okay, there's progress. Yes, I mean 4.3%.

Still means nearly 10,000 military women a year or so. Corporal, crisis, not quite averted. Not even close, sir. You know, I think it's part of patriarchal hierarchical cultures. People are told not to report because they're going to harm the group, which is needs of the army, which is the same thing that white evangelical women are told when the pastor assaults them, right? It's like you just got to suck it up for the good of the group. And in almost high control groups and cults, we see very strict gender binaries and control of gender.

But I also got this full dose of evangelical purity culture from the military. And it's something that I'm still deconstructing. And it's like you're supposed to make us forget that you're a woman, but also be a goddamn good woman. I love being like this feminine presenting woman and also being like, yeah, I was this badass soldier. You know, so, and that's another level to women. And when I filed my PTSD claim with the VA, you better believe I filed an entire additional PTSD complaint for the rape culture of the military, just being every day. And in fact, one of the things that has happened since I published uncultured is that women of every generation alive who have worn the uniform have reached out to me to say, I thought it got better since my day. And I thought it got better since my day.

and I could point to two pieces of legislation that were intended to make it better. And I have young women telling me every day now on social media. They're like, nope, still like that. We'll be right back. And we're back. And we're B-A-C-K. Just before we go any further,

it is September 14th. And whose birthday is it? You're co-leaders. It's Amy Winehouse. And Liz Ayacuzzi, happy birthday, Liz. Thank you, Tyler. I would rather be nowhere else but with you guys. Yeah, what a party we're having.

You're going to love your 30s. Also, Margaret Singer, shout out. Yeah. It was also her birthday today. She was her that birthday. She was born in 1879. And Nas, and unfortunately I would encourage Rob to play. One of my favorite Nas songs, but...

But... But Spotify. We're not allowed to do that anymore. So I guess I'll have to wrap it for you. Editor's note, we asked her not to. Happy birthday, Liz. I appreciate you. Thanks, Tyler. Now today, Daniela is a cult expert.

But when exactly did her wisdom, shall we say, ignite? Years after I had left the cult, when I am watching this murder-suicide that the founder's son did on the news, and hearing children of God cult, children of God cult, children of God cult. And then I had two thoughts. I was like, that's what's wrong with me. I grew up in a cult. And then my very next thought was, that's why we spent so much time talking about how we

aren't a cult using that word. I mean, that was essentially the worst slur in our world. And like, to this day, if your organization has, Pha phrases about why they're not a cult, you're absolutely a cult. That was hard. And then especially I would go on to write an essay for college titled I was raised in a cult. I ended up getting awarded a scholarship and we had to go to a benefit dinner and my mom wanted to read the essay that I wrote. And I wrote a whole different essay.

So I could send it to her that didn't use the word cult, you know. just about being an international missionary and how many things I learned. And it was also very much part of me trying to be like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. You know, which is a very common, like, PTSD thing to do. You know, I spent a good 10 years just like, nope, I am just running as hard as I can

to get my life to something. You know, I'm trying to fit in. I'm trying to get a career, you know, and then be a success. And I really think I had this idea in my head that at some point you will outrun the hard stuff in your past. And now I just don't believe that anymore.

I think, you know, it always catches up with us and we have to go through all the developmental stages of life at some point. That's just so true and so well said. You can try to outrun the hard stuff, but it always catches up to you. Yep. Not even a five-minute miler can outrun the hard stuff.

You tried. You tried, Tyler. I'm still trying. Because knowing you were raised in a cult and really investigating what that means are two very different things. And for Daniela, well, that took years. So at the age of 22, I was doing my training. I was a lieutenant. I was at my first job. So I was finally like safe.

And this is when I Google Children of God cult. And I start reading everything. this is how I found the legal name of my father out, was on a page of well-known pedophiles in the children of God. And so I'm starting to read everything, and I'm starting with Children of God books, and then going on to Mormon books, and I started to develop this idea that Christianity was the problem.

And then I read a Scientology book by Jenna Miscavage Beyond Belief about growing up in Scientology, and I recognized my life, and I specifically recognized the child labor, our lives were the same. We were cleaning up, we were being work, we were blah, blah, blah, but it didn't occur to me that like that was the point. You know, the exploitation of labor was the point. And when I first started using the language of we were trafficked in ex-member groups, all of whom were disgruntled about our lives, I got attacked and boated off the island so fast

because they just could not wrap their heads around it. They would be like, no, we wanted to be there. And I was like, you wanted to be in India as a 12-year-old walking the streets for 12 hours a day begging? But that is the way we were programmed, right? And so it just doesn't occur to you. That is labor. And that is the first time I understood my own life completely.

In 2009, the Children of God now operating under the considerably less alarming name, but not really that alarming. They rebranded to the Family International. Perhaps less alarming, but certainly not less culty sounding. Just a really bad rebrand. They announced that it was about to undergo what leadership called a, quote, change journey. The following year, those changes became official in something called the quote. I'm doing the air quotes with my hands.

The reboot. Sort of like when your computer has 40 years of sexual abuse allegations, so you just turn it off and wait 30 seconds, turn it back on again, and voila. That works. So you have to remember, okay, David Berg died in 1994, and Karen Zerby, his secretary-turned-long-time partner. She took over his leader. Of course. Her name was Karen.

Of course. I think she's actually the original. and Karen. Publicly, she did go by Maria, and she'd been using that name for decades, and after Berg died, well, she went into hiding. She stayed basically entirely out of sight. Why, Liz? Because of Jesus. Wrong. Because in the years, right after his death, governments raided Children of God communes all across the world. We're talking Argentina, Australia, France, Spain. And this resulted, of course, an enormous media exposure and investigations and accusations.

And so Karen was like, I gotta get the fuck out of there. Right. But then in 2005, there's a thing that really broke it. So David Berg's chosen heir, Servi's son, was a young man named Ricky Rodriguez. Now, he was raised from birth as the prophet who one day lead them through the end times. He was also abused from birth. which the cult documented in a child care manual and handed it out as instructions. And Ricky Rodriguez, well, he tracked down one of the women who had abused him.

He killed her, and then he killed himself. And he left a video explaining why. And that's the news story, Daniela saw. In the case of Ricky Rodriguez, evidence that he grew up in a sexually charged atmosphere is hard to refute. and even harder to look at. Primetime obtained this book, the group's infamous manual, once used to raise children. Many pages are full of sexual photos

and suggestive captions. Much of the text was written by that self-proclaimed prophet, David Berg. God created boys and girls able to have children by about the age of 12 years of age. My God, now he's going to educate child and sex. The images in this book leave little to the imagination, including this photo of two and a half year old Ricky with Angela Smith. A woman, some say, had sexually abused Ricky more than two decades ago. Now she was about to become his first target.

I have my clock, all's f*** down. And that is also how Daniela found out that she'd been raised in a cult. So by 2009, the second generation, kids, they were leaving in droves. Their original members were all aging out, and so they tried this reboot. The reboot. Communal homes were closed. Members could now get jobs. Parents could send their children to school, and the enormous system of rules that governed everyday life was largely dismantled. And thankfully with that, membership declined pretty drastically. One academic account estimates that the Family International declined from around 6,000 members at the

time of the reboot to fewer than 3,500 just a couple years later. The whole mission of Children of God was David Berg was God's chosen prophet to prepare the world for the end of days. And we had to give up jobs, forsake all, live the way of the first disciples, and spend all of our time trying to win souls for God before the end of days. And part of why they justified not educating us was because Jesus was going to come back. It didn't matter. So in 2009, and this is after I've already left, she tells her her flock, well, you know, he's not really coming back.

We're not sure, but we'll still be here and be your church. But go get jobs. Go put your kids in school. Most of their primary joiners at this point are 60 to 70 years old. And what I think happened is they just realized that they were losing all the children. the armies of what I grew up in doesn't really exist anymore. Like cults die when you fail to keep or recruit the next generation. So the cult kind of fell apart,

and there are still probably under 1,000 members at this point. My grandfather still runs the money for them. He's still one of the ones that has not separated. And he's in his 70s. I mean, that's insane. Yeah, it is. And Karen, the OG Karen Zerner, She's still out there.

She only just stepped down as co-leader of this cult, Tyler, one year ago, 2025. Steve Kelly was her co-leader host. The man Berg himself chose before he died to be Karen's male companion. And they basically got married because Berg told them to once he was dead. Yeah. And so... They're still together. They're still together.

Karen may have officially retired, but while Steve is still publishing material through the Family International, and Karen's writings are still being circulated. Their current whereabouts are not publicly disclosed, of course, but if you had to guess where they were off living, Tyler, or what you guess? Akron, Akron, Ohio. That's where I'd go. Not Mexico. I think they're in Mexico.

Probably. Probably in Mexico. Is that, you don't know? Nobody knows, right? No. I mean, people on Reddit say Mexico, but. Well, wherever they may be running their cult, it is crazy that they're still doing it, and Danielle's father is still there, and her grandfather, he still cooks the books.

But Daniela's mother. My mother would end up leaving about eight years after me, actually, while I was in basic training, And she had the kind of common crack in the brainwashing, which comes with a medical emergency. And so my mother's second to last child was born with spina bifida and was having a problem with a brain shunt that doctors couldn't figure out in Mexico. And she was just being told everything was fine. We're going to pray over her. We're going to blah, blah, blah. And one day she was like, nope, told my dad, you have the other six kids, got on a plane to Houston.

and then she just never went back. She just told my dad, I'm finally going to go do my own life. My dad had a pretty cushy life. He drew cartoons and sang music and had other people take care of his children and married two beautiful women and was like,

I'm too old to go work. And my mom was like, I will work. I will be the one that does everything. We're not going back. And she, you know, my dad didn't want to leave. So my mom put herself through court reporter school, and that is what she does. They all live in Texas, and she's doing pretty well. You know, we don't exactly have a typical mother-daughter relationship because I sort of

immediately became the mentor when she left the cult because I knew stuff about the world. And she's been dragged along with a lot of my deconstruction. And she, to her credit, raised one child that was three months old when they left the cult and learned how to be a parent from that child and has become quite a good parent to her adult children. And, you know, I mean, the first time she chose her daughters when she got on a plane with her daughter and went to an American hospital against what the leaders were saying. But she learned to choose her children. And I'm very proud of her for that. like I was not this poised five years ago. I thought I was fine, and then I read uncultured,

and I was like, this lady's not fine. Let's go to more therapy. And I just think writing a memoir is a whole different level of deconstruction. And, I mean, I lost 30 pounds. The doctors were checking me for cancer, for all the stuff. I mean, it was so emotionally heavy, because you have to crawl back into those. years so that you can describe it. Just like writing as an eight-year-old girl and then coming back

down the stairs to my own child and husband and a life that doesn't seem like mine, it was really intense. But the thing I didn't realize was how helpful it was going to be to me to put a book in the world and then have other people engage with that. I feel like 90,000 people have read this story and like held that little girl's hand and walked through it, you know. And I feel really honored because it is such a hard story to read or listen to, but an important one and a really, really well-written one. I have a master's degree from Harvard, and I was taking a class on personal identity. And that was when I realized, I was like, oh, I didn't get to form my own identity. and then I was like, cool, I can go do that now.

And so it occurred to me one day at a musical Hamilton. I got in my seat and I was like, I have to be on that stage. Like that is the culmination of my life in the performance cult. I have to be on that stage. The next day I was like, I'm not a Broadway trained actress, singer, or dancer, so I guess I'm going to have to write a musical. and the whole concept came to me at once. You know, what I have written is this great approximately three-hour show

that shows you children growing up under extremism and being programmed, but the children are puppets because I will not make more child actors and because children in cults are puppets. And then going into the military in my all-female army and, you know, the culmination is she literally stops climbing the ladder, jumps down, lights the whole game on fire. And I'm taking that music that my dad wrote for the cult that sold millions around the world and putting it in my show.

I don't know how to build a musical from here, but one of the things I'm really good at is surrounding myself with the right people and then listening to them. So I think that traditional publishing and media in Hollywood do not understand that the craze about cults right now is not voyeurism. It's millions and millions and millions of Americans who also grew up under extremism or in single family cults or in one one cults or in companies that were like cults or in the military, right? There's this huge audience. And so all of the cult babies and all of the veterans want to come dance and sing their trauma out. And that performance is a huge theme of the performance

because that's what cults are. And it's interesting how when someone starts deconstructing and especially deconstructing out loud, their friends and family will pretty quickly start calling them a narcissist. And it's like you have to do that. You have to spend time asking yourself what you want and trying things and looking goofy and failing.

And, you know, I just picked up a guitar for my 38th birthday. And I was like, I'm going to play guitar now because I didn't get to it as a child. And I don't know if I would have liked music because I wasn't exposed to that. And Daniela has a very strong, entertaining and informative online presence known as the Knitting Cult Lady. I have just spent so much time deconstructing and healing. And I can't say enough how much knitting is good for trauma and just doing art and making stuff. And yeah, I built myself a life where I need. knit and talk about cults. There she sits with her colorful hair and colorful attitude,

knitting gorgeous pieces while talking about cults, coercion, and bad guys in all their forms. Oh, someone wanted to try me today, and you know what? I have been meaning to make the video about how cults are always trying to control your underwear. And if you think this is not going to be relevant to you, hang on, because I promise you that it will. I'm Danielle, a scholar of called extreme groups and extremely bad leadership. I give all of my stuff names, so this is the fringe belief necklace. I make these really fancy crocheted necklaces, and I call them love bomb collars, and then I get to explain to people what love bombing is, and the bracelets are called exit

cost cuffs, et cetera. For Danielle, growing up, family meant hundreds of people that she didn't choose and didn't really know. But today, thankfully, Daniela's family is, they're much smaller, and it's a family of her choosing. But my husband literally deploying to Afghanistan, just celebrated 11 years of marriage and going strong. And it's funny because I'm married to someone who also doesn't have a spiritual bone in his body. But our child is a little witchy, spiritual little girl who is very intrigued by death. and what happens afterward, she from the ages of five to eight would just like pop up at conversations

and tell people how long they had left to live. And we could not figure it out. She was in therapy, all of these things. And finally, we realized that she heard that human beings have an 80 year lifespan. So every single time we met a new person, she would ask them how old they were. And then she would go away and do the math in her head and then just pop up like a scary little girl ghost and be like, you have 40 more years left to live. In my musical, I have a song called Cults Always Promise Space Travel. But it's, you know, they're always promising something that they can't deliver in the here and now, right?

It's got to be after some sort of metaphorical or real space travel. We were told we were going to grow up and live in a gold city inside the moon. the heavenly city pyramid. So in my book, there's this scene after some really hard abuse where I'm in my head, like playing this game that we would play, which was like, plan your mansion in heaven. I would be like, I'm going to have every single book that has ever been written. And people would be like, that's impossible. And I was like, not in heaven.

Anyways, now I live in a very cool townhouse, just decorated with shelves of books. And people send me books. So, you know, I've created this very nice life for myself. I have a very strong partnership with someone who just loves me and gets me and we're just in it and doing life together. And I have a lovely child. And one of the things I tell my daughter, like, we've played the mansion in heaven game, you know. And I'm like, if you want to believe in heaven, let's believe in heaven, you know. But the one thing I want you to know is nobody knows what comes after death.

So just don't compromise things in this life because of some promise that you've been given after death. I just don't care about what comes after. I just, I have just never, for a moment in my life, cared. I've always been in this world, like, I'm here now, and I want to read all the books. Thank you, Daniela. Yeah. Thank you, Daniela, for wanting to read all the books. I want to read all the books, too.

Thanks for teaching me new things. And teaching me new things. And a little reminder, you are supposed to exist. Very, very much. Now go find Daniela at knittingcult lady.com. She sells her incredible cult-themed knitting, including those love bomb collars and exit cost cuffs. And they're really cute.

fun and cool and I like them. You can also find her books, her social media, everything else she's doing right there, and we will link to all of it, of course, in our show notes. Also, we will link Girls Gone Bible in our show notes. Please donate to their Patreon, make sure that they keep going Bible. That's our show. Thanks for being here. Thanks again for your support. Honestly, you guys, we love. We love you guys. They're the best. I like you more now than I did yesterday because of all of the comments. We We also love getting emails from you. We just learned how to read and I'd like to put it to practice.

So please send me some emails, send a list, some emails, send some comments. You know what's cool about this episode? Everything. I just learned that Earth has been around longer than 7,000 years. Again, you learn something new every day. 4.54 billion years. I mean, I can't even wrap my head. Tiny humans in our tiny 85-year lifespan,

for billion years. Think about that for a while. Read all those books, Daniela. Can somebody send me an 8,000-year-old Merlo? I feel like they wouldn't have invented Cat by then. I think it would just have been a Merlot game. Yeah. You know, if Earth was around for 4.5 billion years

and I was around for all of that, I still wouldn't listen to Girls' Gone Bible podcast. So next week, what do we have, Liz? What do we have? Oh, speaking of Girls Gone Bible, we have a really interesting teen mania ministry's story for you. So get ready to acquire the fire. Feel it in your bones.

May he return? Oh, it's a fun one too. I like this one. There was one event where we were given food. We thought was food, but it would be chocolate. It was melted in diapers or eat like Vienna sausages. And once we finished eating, whatever they put in front of us, we then had to go to the top of the hill and roll down the hill and then run back up the hill and roll back down. And the purpose was we had to conclude.

continue this exercise until we vomited. Okay, today is over. It is. Congratulations. Tomorrow is new. Read all the books. Was I an occult? It's hosted, podcasted, stepped on, touched, breathed upon by Liz. I could never join the Army or be as badass as Danielle Ayakosie.

And you, Tyler, I also could never join the Army or be as badass. is Daniela Isam. I can run faster. But I can join a mission. I can mission the shit out of that. You can mission. And Rob, I would pee my pants the first day of boot camp, Para. We love bomb you all.

We love bomb you all. And one more thing? Fuck off, David Berg.