We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - CULTS: How NXIVM Controlled Women & How Sarah Edmondson Helped Take It Down

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

1. How attending a personal development training at a Holiday Inn led to Sarah being branded in a sex "secret sisterhood" initiation ceremony. 2. Her path from top recruiter to the whistleblower who helped take down the cult and its leader Keith Ranieri.  3. Why we’re all susceptible to cult culture – the need for belonging, the temptation of simplification, and how we’re trained to deny our gut instincts. CW: Discussion of cult culture and sexual coercion About Sarah:  Sarah Edmondson is an actor, podcaster, author, and cult-recovery advocate. Sarah has starred in a number of TV series, yet she is most recently known for her real-life saga escaping the multi-level marketing company NXIVM – and DOS, a “secret sisterhood” within NXIVM – which can also be seen on HBO’s The Vow. Sarah’s memoir Scarred shares her true story from the moment she joined NXIVM, to her harrowing fight to get out and bring its founder to justice. Sarah co-hosts the podcast A Little Bit Culty with her husband Anthony ‘Nippy’ Ames, and lives in Atlanta with her husband and two sons. TW: @sarahjedmondson IG: @sarahedmondson Sarah’s resource page: https://www.sarahedmondson.com/resources Steven Hassan’s BITE model: https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I walk through a fire I came out the other side. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. This is going to be a fascinating episode. Today I want you all to know that we are going to talk about some hard things. One being cults and other organizations who are as our guest would say a little bit culty, including detailed discussion of cult culture and sexual coercion. Now, I want you all to understand that I am slightly obsessed with cults. Yes, me too. And high control groups. And next, you really got me. Here's the thing. I don't look at it as like a salacious,

how could you get involved in this situation when I watch this stuff or learn about this stuff? I think of it as a way we can all learn about how control groups work and how mind control works and how, you know, all you have to do is look at our country and the divisiveness and see how people can control other people's thinking, smart people, seeker people, and the effects that that has. And how we are all, a lot of us are in groups that are a little bit culty. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That was Sarah. Absolutely. Sarah Edminton is an actor, podcaster, author, and cult recovery advocate. Sarah has started a number of TV series yet she is most recently known for her real-life saga, escaping the multi-level marketing company,

important to note that that's what they really are, Nexium and DOS, a secret sisterhood within Nexium, which can also be seen on HBO's The Vowl. Watch it. Abby and I may have watched it twice. The entire thing twice. Sarah's memoir, Scarred, shares her true story from the moment she joined Nexium to her harrowing flight to get out and bring its founder to justice. Sarah co-hosts the podcast a little bit culty with her husband, Anthony Nippy Ames.

Nippy! Nippy and I go way back. We probably spend my time with them when you have this. I think it's true. And lives in Atlanta with her husband and two sons. Sarah, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I have to say this has been in my virtual vision board

for a very long time, probably since son team, to came out. And I just knew that we would talk one day. I didn't know when, but I felt it. And I visualized it and fantasized about it. And to have it come true like this is truly very meaningful and I'm grateful to be here. I'm going to try not to cry too much.

You don't have to try. Yeah, we do crying a lot here. Let's go back Sarah to, I would love to spend some time talking about the specifics of what happened to you and then what happened to them because of you. She's amazing. And then let's get into like how we can all freaking learn from this experience. This is a meaningful then diagram for me

because untamed is largely about how do we create lives and relationships and families and communities where people are held by belonging but also free. Because in so many groups, we are not just cult cults, but like all groups, we have organized human beings in a way where we get to choose our individuality or choose our belonging, but we often don't get to do both. And families, and churches, and companies.

So this is a fascinating conversation to me and I think specifically to this pad. So long ago, in the olden days of your, you were living in Vancouver, you were struggling actor, you were setting all your intentions, you were a seeker in a half, like me and Abby, seeking seeking, where's my purpose, where's my people, and you go on a cruise. Yes. And then tell us about what happens. Probably also listening to the integral girls. So I'm going to this cruise with my boyfriend at the time who I'd also been

struggling with like this is the guy I'm going to marry or we're going to work through our stuff. What's my purpose? All the things you just said so beautifully. And I meet Mark Vesandre, the director of What the Bleep Do We Know, which at the time in the younger days of your 2005, this was when this was a really big film. And it was a film that shifted consciousness. And she loves that. Okay, so there you go. And I had set the intention of going on this crew and finding my purpose. And you know, it was going to be with a bunch of spiritual people. And I was seated across from him where I basically had a conversation with him that changed the whole trajectory of my life.

And he had just come from a next-dem training himself. He wasn't a coach or anything, but he'd been a student and had a profound experience. And asked me a couple of questions that shifted my belief system around love and attention. And I was, I had been really sick and I had this recognition or they would call it an integration and a-ha.

Oh, I was just trying to get love and attention from my boyfriend through sickness. It was just how I got it from my mother and that's an old pattern and blah, blah, blah. And in the mix of this one week, by the way, it was in the Caribbean. So this beautiful surroundings with all these spiritual people, and I'm looking for my purpose.

And Mark Vicente basically tells me about a group of humanitarian that are trying to change the world and we're all doing these incredible projects. And the main thing that drew me to him wasn't even so much about, like I know he mentioned Keith, the leader who is the smartest man in the world, blah, blah. That didn't draw me. It was the community. I felt I thought I'd found my wolf pack and I was, you know, so excited about that, but also I really loved him. I really looked up to Mark and I thought that if I could transition

from the kind of fluffy acting that I'd been doing to pay the bills into media that shifts consciousness As with him then that would be more meaningful. That's really what I wanted to do So he could have really told me that he was doing anything and I would have been like I'm on board I want to work with you. I want to do what you're doing and that was the beginning of Him introducing me to executive success programs, which is we didn't refer to it as an ex-heam at the time, it was ESP. And I really jumped in. I had on

my website and all over my room at the time, leap, and the net will appear. So I was doing that and not researching, which is something I recommend everybody now. They're doing a good, enjoy the group research. And the net did appear for some time, but then it disappeared. So you go to an ESP executive, tell me what I never knew what that meant. Oh yeah, executive success training. Okay.

Executive success program, it was a training. Okay, so he invites you to this training of this group. It's called a human potential program. Yeah. So tell us what happens at the first meeting. What what are they saying? What are you feeling? I believe I was taking a training that would upgrade my software, upgrade my belief system in a conversation, conversational philosophical. I'm taking a personal and professional development program in a holiday in with a group of like-minded individuals. That's not what a cult looks like. That's white robes and drinking blood and all the

weird things that we used to think of with cults. But there were weird things on day one and luckily Marquad preempted me and said it's going to be weird. This was my experience. It was very strange, but you know, wait till day three and everything will make sense. And also the leaders were, I've since learned, trained by Keith and Nancy, the leadership, to preempt our visceral, our gut reactions to the things that were bad and wrong, namely, Sasha's bowing to somebody I never met named Vanguard, having to call Nancy the prefect. All of these things now knowing what I know are very, very obvious red flags, but they said, you're here, you know, you've paid your money. It's not refundable. When you're, I think you've even said something like, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't you agree

that all successful people have limitations and they know their limitations and they're wanting to work on them. You say, yeah, sure. So you're like, that's the first lift. And they'd say, okay, great. So what are your limitations? So that now you've already admitted you have limitations. And then there's the preemptive when you hit your limitations, when you hit an area of growth, it's going to be uncomfortable, which is also true. If you've been in therapy. It's uncomfortable to work through your shit. So we're, we already agreed to that and they say, so when you hit up against your shit, you're going to want a bolt, you're going to want a flirt, you're going to want to eat, you're going to want to smoke.

And we just ask you to stay in the room and work through it. And so you agree to that. But that's tricky because I had so many impulses to leave because it didn't feel right. But I'd paid my money. I trusted Mark and I was committed to my growth. And we said before every class, clap. We are committed to our success. Okay, I'm committed to my success.

I'm here to grow. This doesn't feel right, but no pain, no gain. I'm going to muscle through it. And that was the beginning of my indoctrination right from day one, accepting that somebody above me in the structure, so this martial art structure of growth, which is one of the things that eventually appealed to me, especially coming from acting where there's no measurement. Now I could measure my growth, and if I did one thing, I could get expect an outcome, and I loved that.

But in that structure, the person above you and the ranking system knows better than you. So there's this immediate power over, which is one of the red flags that I'm now subjugating my own belief about myself and my own knowing about myself to what somebody else sees and knows. And that's that set me up for the rest of my time there and the you know the eventual demise of me as a leader and then ultimately the program. And that sounds jarring at first, but that's what so many groups do. That's kind of the first of this sort of high control group, which is your intuition is just fear, right? Wasn't it like you're saying in nex, your intuition is just a feeling to overcome? It's just a viscera.

Your feeling is just a viscera, just a visceral thing inside you. They'd even say like the metaphor they used was that if your car, like the gas light comes on and say you need more gas, it's possible, but it also could be that the light is broken. Oh my God. She's so good.

So that if you have that feeling, it could be that there's fear or it could be that this is broken. Oh my God. So that if you have that feeling, it could be that there's fear or it could be that this is broken and you have a disintegration. Okay. So you know, all the things you hear, you'll be uncomfortable, but growth happens outside your comfort zone. So you really can't win because it's like, no, either it either makes sense and you like it or it doesn't make sense and you hate it, but that's a sign that there's something wrong with you, not that there's something wrong with it. Correct.

But Christianity has the same thing. I mean, all over and over again, I heard in the pews, I would raise my hand and say, wait, why are you talking about gaze this way or why are we doing that? And there was never an explanation. It was just always don't lean on your own understanding. That's scripture. God works in mysterious ways, don't lean on your own understanding. So whenever you have an impulse or an intuition that is wisdom

I mean didn't next time even tell you like the body is just something to overcome Yeah, the body was something to overcome the body It was always like in the moment of staying in bed and being cozy in the sheets are getting out of bed and like fulfilling your Ideology or your goals and you could never be principled unless you can overcome the needs of the body. And that got more and more extreme. And telling people to override their body is very dangerous, because their body is very dangerous.

Yes. And if you're controlling people's minds and you're telling them to override their bodies, they're completely powerless to you. Yep. And also if you have any sort of negative feeling, any concern, and you bring that to the leadership who knows better, they can always gaslight you and flip it back on you and

say, wow, it seems like you're really reactive, or it seems like you're really angry. You may want to journal on that or go sit with that. And that's why I think it's so confusing because in all of the leadership classes and courses that are out there, they talk about comfort zones. In order to grow, one of the principles of growing is getting out of your comfort zone. And so, I can understand how you can be in this space where you're like, well, I want to grow. So, this maybe, that's what this comfort is, just me pushing the boundary of my comfort zone

a little bit. Exactly. Every one of these has a little bit of truth. And that's why it's a dangerous decision. Oh, God. That's, I'm watching the documentary. I was like, well, I totally get this. Like, I get why this can happen to people.

Me too. Because partly there's so much truth inside of some of the limited beliefs at cause, the viscera, all that stuff. There's truth there. There's so much there is truth there. And it makes me laugh so much when people are like, oh my god, how the hell could you do that? I could never be in a cult. We're all in a cult.

Like, white supremacy, pay sharky. We're all buying the same thing, spending all of our money. We are counting our calories. We have our gods. They're just celebrities on Instagram. We're all going against our intuition constantly. I'm fascinated by this whole thing and I think it is really important to two things. I think we should circle back to the truth of the initial like getting you in the door because I think that's really, really compelling that there's this whole moment that is like half truth, half manipulation

where there's so much truth there that your confirmation bias is kicking in and only seeing the truth. And you said the whole rest of your time, you were just, you were just chasing that initial feeling of that original moment. So I think that's really important to say. But I also, I'm curious what you think Sarah, because right now I feel like we're living in a moment where, as you said, like the white robes and we can really differentiate ourselves from, oh, I would never join, you know, next year or Scientology or whatever it was those are a little bit crazy. But we're now living in a world where half of people's aunts and uncles are on Ford Chan and QAnon. We're living in a moment where people are losing people to this conspiratorial way of thinking

that is not necessarily new in this nation but is dramatically refreshed and reinforced in this moment. So I think it's important to be speaking to the people who are losing people to these. Absolutely. So there was truth in it and you said you can change people's mindset in three days. Yes, you can essentially replace the core tenets of a belief system if they're open, which I was. I mean, I was skeptical and I was very much like, you know, hey, my parents are therapists. What are you going to teach me? But I was also like, I mean, I was skeptical and I was very much like, you know, hey, my parents are therapists. What are you going to teach me?

But I was also like, I want my money's worth and I want to work with Mark. And I want to, you know, grow. I've always been a seeker, you know, doing the artist's way and reading Celestein prophecy and all, you know, all the things. Check. Check. Check. I was my favorite book too. Yeah, I'll forget the album. Yes. All the things. I wish I had my full bookshelf here. I would show you all of those.

I'm sure mine's the same as yours. Yeah. Yes. And I think ultimately, they do these things called preamps. Right? It's from the front of the room. The facilitator would say things like, you know, a lot of people have struggled with the sashes.

And they don't want to wear them because they haven't learned to measure things in their life, which was true. And perhaps they have issues with authority. So everything that was weird, that like, you know, like the sashes and calling him that hurt and all the things. Tell us about the sashes and calling him Vanguard. So next year I'm have this martial art system of growth. You would wear a white sash, this like four inch by four inch long, really tacky to be totally honest, piece of satiny cloth around your neck. And when

you grew enough to become a coach, which required hitting certain benchmarks in your growth and in your ability to recruit and in your level of education, there's three things, which seemed very measurable. And then you go to the next level, which is Proctor Orange Sash, and then senior Proctor Green, counselor, blue, and senior counselor purple. And there was a whole bunch of others that nobody ever hit. Nancy was a gold sash. You'll see that in the vow. And Keith was a double white as the perpetual humble student. Right? Yes. And Keith, the van, the vanguard. Yeah. Keith, you called Keith or Nuri vanguard and Nancy Salisman, prefect. The prefect. In the classroom outside of that, you would say Keith and Nancy.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Or P and V. If you were at that level of comfort with them. Explain to us what you believe the purpose from knowing what you know now. What was the purpose of the sashes? Well, with everything that was like what I thought it was then and what I think it is now. What I thought it was then was the first time an inner process, like psychology, could ever be measured by it in a scientific way, quantifiable, verifiable, peer reviewed. So we thought that that was like revolutionary and that it would be such a gift to the world

if we could actually measure people's internal growth and happiness and basically it was the path of joy. Like if you could get to the end, that you'd be enlightened like Buddha. That was the goal, to be integrated, to be non-reactive, to break through all limiting beliefs and this path would measure it. I believe now, and I think this is a chapter in my book

where the last time I saw Keith, he said, he was trying to get me to perform in some video where I was doing some like recruitment thing. His last time I was in Albany. And he said, make sure your state's up. He needs to be excited because it's really the illusion of hope. And I couldn't wrap my head around that at the time.

What he was saying to me, but later as I woke up, I realized that the whole thing is an illusion of hope. This is a path that you think you're on to gain success and to grow. It's just like with MLMs and why I equate MLMs and cults. And I know that many of your listeners are probably in MLMs and this might be hard to hear. What's the MLM? Oh, sorry, multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme at its worst or network marketing, where someone's selling you protein powder or greens juice or skincare or leggings. And it's an pyramid structure. Only people who make the money are at the top and the people

the bottom never do. But there's a illusion of like if you work hard and you're happy enough and you use the tools you too can, you know, have your dream life and buy a hammer and move to Hawaii, whatever it is that they're pedaling, right? Like that's the image on the newsletter and as like financial freedom and health and wellness and all those things. So I believe that it was just a structure to A. keep people

motivated to go to the next level and dangling the carrot of growth if that was important to people. It really did seek out seekers like myself, idealistic people who wanted to make the world a better place and evolve themselves and be in this community of like mind-a-team anditarians. And it's hard for me not to roll my eyes as I say that now because I know what it really is. But I think that ultimately it was to maintain the structure. When you are with somebody in next year, who is a higher rank than you, they can always pull rank and what they say goes.

And I'm certainly guilty of it as well with people that were lower rank than me, as I was trained to do. I'm Jonathan M. Hevar. I'm a podcast producer and someone who likes fancy things. But I grew up working class. My parents were immigrants with factory jobs. And because of that, I think about class a lot.

And I want to talk about it. That's what we're doing on my new podcast, Classy. And what did you all eat? You know, trailer food. And I was like, girl, we're not doing that anymore. You'll hear from people who told me awkward, embarrassing, and strangely intimate things about what class means to them. She said, you know, for the house cleaner,

I hide the tag on the $6 bread. And I just thought, don't you think she knows that you're wealthy? You're hiding the tags from yourself. Classy. A new podcast from Pineapple Street Studios. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. So really, and this is going to be oversimplified. But what they were telling you was that they had turned human emotion into a science.

Yes. Basically, that's simplified. But we have figured out people. It's a science, it's measurable, it's all the things. And we are going to teach it to you. And you're going to be the people that solve people. And then it became evangelical. They gave you, they gave it to you as first of all, this will fix your life.

And this will also fix the world. Because we will go spread our message, we will spread the good news. Is how the Christian people would say. And then your job was to bring as many people in the fold as possible. Yes. But the challenge is the people in power know that it's bullshit and that it's controlling. But everybody else doesn't.

And I think that all the time about like fundamentalist evangelical Christian, like there's a lot of people who believe in it. They are, I think they're doing good. They think they're doing good. They have pure hearts about it. The people in power usually don't. They know it's bullshit. They know it's the illusion of hope. Right. But that's what they were telling you. They have pure hearts about it. The people in power usually don't. They know it's bullshit.

They know it's the illusion of hope. But that's what they were telling you. They'd solve people. And you believed it. You were like, they have fixed humans. Yes, there was even a line of like, imagine if the world leaders had this curriculum. They wouldn't bomb each other.

Mm-hmm. We'd all be a one big happy family. That was the goal. And that's specifically also why it was sort of elite. And then how it was justified was not trying to reach everybody, we're trying to reach people in power, we're trying to reach politicians like we had the the son of the former president of Mexico and all of his inner circle like that's that was huge. That's why I think it was so important watching the documentary at how Keith and Nancy were targeting famous people, people in power. Because, you know, this is how the structure goes, right? He, he was basically a car salesman

that then created this, this science quote unquote. And then he's like, okay, well, we need to get this to the masses. And how do we do that? And so there's so much intention and deliberate action on how the manipulation was not just forced on you, but trying to actually get this word out there. I just, to me, that's like the most gross thing about it is that it was all on purpose. But you said, yeah, bodies that I can't remember who. But it was like they'd hacked the human brain. Like they figured out everything, like everything was explainable and they had the secret potion of understanding.

Mm-hmm. And I just Sarah as a seeker who's always trying to find it. Like I'm just, I'm just one book, one show, one Buzzfeed quiz, one away from nailing it, whatever it is. I'm so close, it's like that we've talked about it before in the pub, but that temptation of simplification. Yes. Right? Like it's, I really thought I'd found it. Yeah. And the word science too is really alluring. Like

when you, if you start calling something science, my brain, which is mostly cynical around this stuff, like, oh my gosh, my brain's like, I've I ended that. It's provable. It's measured. Right. You can recreate it. Like, okay, maybe this is something. I totally love it. It wasn't woo-woo. It wasn't woo-woo. It wasn't woo-woo. Although from the outside, the sashes, to me, I'm like, that's a bridge too far. Okay, but listen, but even the sashes, everybody's talking shit about the sashes. Oh, come on, every religion has like, now you get your robe, now you get your hat, now you get your habit, now you get your whatever. It's like brownies, remember brownies?

Brownies, I wanted to be a brownie because of the little outfit. The patches. Yeah, the patches and the orange scarf. When I made that recognition between wanting to be a proctor and wanting to be a brownie, I was like, oh man. Yeah. I'm in it for all the wrong reasons. So Sarah, you do the five days.

Yes. And you say like, now I know what it really was. When you look back on your life, what does your life become between the five days and that you were in for 12 years, correct? It doesn't years. What was your life like during that time? Well, it was changed a lot through the 12 years. I'd say after my first five day, it was when I was the most zealous. I came out of that five day feeling like a person who just found CrossFit. It's all you can talk about. Yeah, yeah.

All I can talk about, I was a true recruiter and I made a group of people that came with me and there's a group of people that thought I was in a cult immediately. And I was like, that's fine. They don't get it. When they're ready, they'll come talk to me and they'll see how happy and successful I am and they'll want to do it. And that did happen With people who initially thought it was weird and eventually they came and and some of them never did

And that's fine But it changed it went from being like this is amazing I want all my friends to do this and you know bringing people to Albany then being like well Albany is way too far from Vancouver I need to get a center in Vancouver and I got a lot of from Vancouver, I need to get a center in Vancouver. And I got a lot of support from that desire, because they wanted people to build centers, right? They wanted to grow and change the world. So here's somebody like me who has, I've got a big network and very passionate about the things that I believe in. I always have been. I've, you know, as a top salesperson of the candy bars to raise money for the school TV in 10th grade. That was me.

When your book came out, I gave it to all my friends and I felt, needed it. That's just who I am. I promote the things that I love. So it was an easy fit for me to talk about it. And I think when I showed up in Albany with a bunch of young beautiful actresses, I was 28 when I started, 28 to 40. I got out when I was 40. There was 12 years, there was a huge range of levels

of commitment and loyalty and money spending that take a long time to sort of delineate the stages, but I see it in kind of three chunks, and the first chunk was building and trying to get to Proctor. Proctor was the level of the sash, is where you could actually earn money. So up until then, I wasn't able to earn money as a, so I was like, basically running these trainings and flying out people and working my butt off to get to Proctor.

I went up the stripe path very, very quickly, which was really motivating to me, but I got stuck at the level just before proctor. And I believe they have. Shocked. Shocked, right? Yes. And that's the part when I say the illusion of hope is,

you know, it's actually not that measurable. Certain things like recruitment and how many levels of the curriculum you've taken are measurable, in terms of your personal growth, which was decided by somebody above you, your coach, and the higher ranks. Like, has she gotten through her control issues? No.

I don't think she has, does she, she's still concerned with people liking her and as she's like, so those were the things that I was working on as a person, but they determined if I'd worked through them enough. And so they could always say, well, you haven't really gotten this nugget yet. And that was always what was used against me when I felt ready. And if anyone ever expressed that they were ready to get promoted,

it meant that you were definitely not ready to get promoted. You'd only get promoted if you weren't attached or vested was the word and next to the promotion. So you had to pretend that you didn't care. And then I had to be like kind of covert about making sure that my coach knew that I was ready for promotion. It was very challenging.

And they kind of controlled your life. It seemed like everyone who got deeper into this found themselves all of their time suddenly taken by this. What people are listening don't know. You were with this group all the time every day morning until night, correct? Correct. Only difference for me and say somebody like Bonnie or some of the other people that moved there, if you're watching the vow, the people that are still loyal to Keith. If you can believe it, there is a small group. Those people moved to Albany. And I think ultimately the thing that saved me is that I didn't move. So whilst it was my passion and I even

like slowly gave up acting, I also never left Vancouver, but I spent day in and day out coaching people, working with people, filling trainings. Like literally I'd be brushing my teeth before getting into bed and being like helping people with their goals. I ate and I breathed and I slept next to him, but in Vancouver. So I think when later, cut to 12 years later, when I should hit the fan, I had something to go back to. And I had a family that never cut me off. And that was a strategic move on their part. And we can get more into that later in terms of the recovery.

And there was no compound. A lot of people think that these cults of compounds are wasn't, but there was a very close-knit community in Clifton Park and Albany, and that people who moved there and gave up everything, which is a huge red flag. By the way, if somebody asked you to do that, those people, they got messed with way more than I did.

And I think in many ways, they kind of left me alone because I was such a good recruiter and I was just constantly sending them fresh blood for lack of a better word. In fact, that's what Keith used to say. And in the getting people there and taking up all their time and this becoming their community and their money, that's another way of controlling because you can't leave if your whole entire life is invested in this thing. So you have a baby. I thought it was really interesting that you framed it this way, but you felt like maybe they sensed that your loyalty was shifting a little bit to this baby and family.

And that is the time where your best friend in Nexium Lauren approaches you. And she says what? your best friend in Nexium Lauren approaches you. And she says what? She said the same thing to me that Keith said to her, which was how important is your growth? And what are you willing to do for it? And she says anything. And let me back up for one second, before she comes to me, and after I'd had Troy,

I was a three-stripe proctor, which meant I need to get one more stripe on my sash before I could get to green, which is another place that they stole me for three years to get to green sash, which there was only 12 or 13 of in the whole company. So it was like the highest level of people that were alive. Some of the purple sashes had passed away, which is a whole separate story. So I was the fact that they promoted me from three straight proctor to senior proctor, like literally had a newborn with me, and they promoted me. It was like, what?

But I found out later it was a motivational promotion. They wanted to keep me motivated. Of course. And that worked for a little bit, and that allowed me to keep my center and to be the green overseeing the center, which won't mean anything to people unless they are like super nexium diehard nerds, but it was that was the first motivation. And then I mean, I felt stalled on my personal growth. And when Lauren came to me and had it been anybody else, had it been Alice and Mac or anyone

else involved in DOS, I probably would have said no. So they were smart to send Lauren because I trusted her. She was my best friend. She was, she married Nippy and I back in 2013. And she was like the person I would go to for everything. Like in the many ways, people idolize Keith and idolize Nancy. I probably had that more with Nancy and more so Lauren. Even though we were like the exact same age, she was ahead of education and I just trusted her. So there was no reason for me to ever doubt that she didn't have my best intentions. Okay. And she says, how much do you want to grow and what are you willing

to give up for? What are you willing to do for? What are you willing to do? I was like, oh, anything. And then she says, what? So I want to tell you about something that's incredible, this is me paraphrasing, an incredible thing that's super exciting and like totally help me more than anything that's ever helped me in Nexium, nothing to do in Nexium. And I want to tell you about it before I can,

you have to give me some piece of collateral, which is also might sound bizarre to your listeners, but collateral had been introduced a few years prior as something that we all did to put something down against our word, like something you put down as a weight against your commitment. So that's something we'd been doing for a while, so her asking me for that wasn't that weird

in that time period. And I gave her a written confession about a bunch of stuff asking me for that wasn't that weird in that time period. And I gave her a written confession about a bunch of stuff that I had done in my 20s that I didn't want the world to know that she would hold to make sure I never spoke of the secret. She sent that to somebody, a picture of it to somebody in which I now know was Keith. And the feedback was that it wasn't bad enough,

wasn't damaging enough, wasn't damaging enough. And so I had to lie and say worse things. Again, for her just to hold, not to release, but just for me to keep my word. And that's when she told me about the Secret Society and this group of badass bitches that we're going to change the world. And just like the men have the free mason's, the women we're were gonna have something. It was nothing to do with Nexium and we were gonna pull each other to the best versions of ourselves and keep each other in check and just take everything to the next level. And it all, I mean, it all sounded like kind of crazy but also kind of fun. Mm-hmm.

And just seeing enough, I heard you say, you were furious about the Trump election. Like this actually felt to you like something women empowering, we're gonna get together, we're gonna change the world in that vibe. Yes, and this is something we'd always talked about in other curriculums in next year is that like what you vote for matters and not just in politics, but what you buy

and where your money goes is a vote for something or if you boy-caught it, that's a vote too, right? So this was like, where are your votes going? Who are you working with? That part sounded exciting. And I was, you know, like in. And also the fact that Lauren wanted to mentor me and she said that I would be, and this is where it's the start to get weird, like, okay, I'm going to be your master and you're going to be my slave. Okay, so stop there. Yeah. This whole is also called DOS. Right, so this is DOS. What she's being initiated into, what she's getting collateraled into is a group called

DOS, which stands for, we thought it was dominant over submissive. It is not correct. I can't even remember dominant. What is the Hiquia Serrurium? That's right. Correct. I can't even remember dominant. What ever the hequeous sororium, something like basically when we found out later, master over the slave women. Okay. Why just explain to us, you were asked to take a life vow. Yeah. And to whom and how did this master enslave thing come up and explain to us how that wasn't

a huge red flag? A huge red flag. Yeah. Well, it was a huge red flag. And that was also spun for me saying the reason it feels so uncomfortable is because it should feel uncomfortable, because you're making this commitment to override that. That comfortable feeling is an indication that you're doing it right in this case. And the master slave thing is just like everything that was explained away with ESP.

Well, it's not, Sasha's aren't weird, it's just the martial art system. Vanguard's not weird, it's, Vanguard means the leader of a philosophical movement, which he is. So it was like that. It's like master slave. Like, obviously, you can't be my slave. You live in Vancouver. It's just like a guru disciple relationship

of we're calling it master slave. Me going, but in the next year curriculum, we talk about how everyone should always have the right to the products of their own efforts. But now I'm your slave. It's just a metaphor, Sarah. I'm committing to mentor you through this vow of obedience, which to me was a real honor because it was hard to get Lauren's time.

Even though we were quote unquote, like such close friends, getting one-on-one time with her was very difficult. So I'm now being like, oh, I'm going to be mentored by this person who I really respect. I'm taking a lifetime of aloe obedience. That even wasn't so weird because I already kind of had that with her. We had made jokes about us doing trainings together in our 80s down in Florida with our matching tracksuits and teaching this curriculum for the rest of our lives. So I already had that with her.

I had that type of friendship. Master's slave thing was like, okay, it's just an exercise. There was a lot of things that we did in next year that were metaphorical exercises. So to me, it was like another thing like that. And what else did she say? So there's a lifetime vow, the master's slave, and that we'd go through an initiation ceremony

and that I'd have sisters. And listen, I had so many questions along the way. Every time I had a question, it would stop. You're being controlling. Trust the process. You're not going to know everything. That's part of the process. Well, who's your master? I can't tell you that. But it's a woman? Yes. Lie. So she lied upon. There's so many lies from the beginning, even her telling me that it had nothing to do with Nexium. She knew that Keith started it, because Keith invited her.

Okay. So she becomes your master. Yes. And then what happens each day? What is your day like? What is this program? What happens to you each day? Well, yes.

There's a lot of things that happen from this initial commitment to doing it to like getting out a few months later. And a lot of that's in the book because it's very difficult to explain and why I want to write it down so I could like hand it over to people and they could go through the steps because it didn't go from, hey, you want to join this group and have Keith initials torched into your pubic area. Like it wasn't laid out that way. It happened in stages, which is part of the manipulation and deception that I'm now

so passionate about explaining. There's always a bait and switch. You think you're joining one thing and it's actually something else. And I, my recognition of what that something else was happened very slowly. And the whole time I'm thinking this is strange, but also kind of cool, like I had this sort of like secret thing with the women, nippy didn't know about it. I told him upon Lauren's suggestion that I was going to be picking up my growth a little bit with the greens, and I might be doing some things are a little bit weird and he was

like cool, whatever, like he had his thing with the guys and I had my thing with the women and we're just sort of like growing and you know Didn't really talk about it amongst ourselves too much Which is another thing that I understand is they were trying to divide us right men's ministry women's ministry I know yes. Yes. Yes exactly and I think there it all is very quickly became I recognize it's not what I signed up for. It started off with very simple assignments. Like Lauren was trying to help me be more self-resilient and self-reliant.

So she's like, I want you to go a whole day without asking Nippy for anything, no help with anything. And in fact, you can't ask anyone for help. They want you just to figure out everything on your own. And that actually was kind of a cool exercise because I saw even how I'd ask, asking for directions. Like I interact with people when I'm out in the world. I'm not one of those people who tries to figure it out

on their own. I'm like, oh, sorry. Do you know where the soap is? Like, I'm very, I engage. Right. Other people aren't like that. So I realized how not self-reliant I was. But that kind of example was like, oh, I engage, right? Other people aren't like that. So I realized how not self-reliant I was. But that kind of example was like,

oh, this is good for me. This is good for my growth. Also isolating. Because I'm not isolating to anyone. Right. Exactly. But there were some things that right away I was like, uh-uh.

As soon as I was committed, they said I had to give more and more. I had to give new collateral every month. So, like what? Newed photos. Lauren asked for the deed to my home, which, of course, I never gave her, but I had this valve obedient. So, at this point, when I started to lie, and I was like, okay, I'm not sure how to do

that, but I will talk to my lawyer about how to draft up a deed and put it in my home in your name. Just for you to hold. Just for you to hold, not actually to have, just to make sure I stay on the path. And also, we were doing things like we to respond to text messages, which also had been happening for years in the SOP and the genus training. So that wasn't that abnormal either. But that was something that happened at a certain time. Somebody would text, are you ready at noon? And we go, I'm ready. And if people didn't show up, people would come looking for you or call your spouse or your employer, being like, where's Sarah? Oh, sorry, she's at yoga. And then I'd

get in trouble and have to explain like how I wasn't taking responsibility for notifying my team. So that just got more and more elevated to the point where we had to be ready all the time. So I had to keep my phone on all the time. I had a toddler at this point, like a two-year-old, and I was very much sleep deprived. And now I had to keep my phone on for these readiness drills that could happen

at any point in the night, which really messed with me because now I was even more sleep deprived on top of having a toddler who didn't sleep through the night. And I mean, meanwhile, I'm thinking, how do I get out of this? I figured that Nancy didn't know. Maybe I'd write a letter to Nancy, and anonymously I was trying to find a way to get out. And Sarah, I don't know if this happened to you, but there was a lot of food things. There was a lot of right away people would say that the women that are being initiated

into this are too heavy. And the master would start controlling the person's calories. And you started noticing that everyone in DOS was getting thinner and thinner. What the hell was that about? Do you believe? I think the food thing and the calories started even way before DOS. The women of Nexium were always obsessed with their weight and being skinny, and every time I went to Albany, they were on a new diet.

They were juice cleansing or doing raw veganism or doing keto or something, and they were all doing it. And like, there'd be some people. Just the women, right? Just the women. Just mostly the women. Yeah, I didn't really notice it with the men. It was something that I never went through, but I saw it. And I saw people getting

thinner and thinner. And I knew of a couple of people who were bulimic and people doing diuretics. And I found out later, of course, after leaving that, that was all for Keith, that these are people that he was having a relationship with. And he wanted them to be like a hundred pounds. He was manipulating their diet. So this is, it's weirder and weirder, you get more and more controlled by these text messages. You have more and more collateral on the other side. So while your intuition is yelling at you, you're also more stuck than you've ever been because yes, they have everything on you, right? So you're then that comes initiation day. And I

don't want you to get too much into it into the details because I want you to protect yourself. Thank you. In your safest way, excellent to the pod squad, what happened that day? Sure. Yeah. I have to keep a kind of bird's eye view if I go into the visceral of it. It just is super triggering.

But I think what's important, like what if I could pass on to your pod squad in terms of something that's relatable is that it's like any moment, it's like extreme peer pressure. There's something going on, you know you don't want to do it, you feel like there's a major downside if you don't do it. And the downside for me is that my collateral would be released because I'd taken a valve obedience and know my master's saying, this is what you have to do. This is the initiation ceremony. And just a backtrack

for a second, for me to accept this invitation, after when she first told me, I had to give more collateral to what they called being fully collateralized. And one of the things was videos of me being disparaging against the people I love most. My husband, Nippy, my mom, my dad, my brother, and these videos were set up in a way that Lauren was holding the phone to make it look like I didn't know that she was filming me. So I'm like, oh yeah, nippy is so blah, blah, blah, my mom, you know, just shit talking them. So that, they knew, Lauren knew that my family is very important to me and that was the worst.

But people had different types of collateral. People, like, there was a lawyer who had a letter about how she planted evidence. There was people revealing their families deep as secrets, a lot of very, very graphic sexual videos that were made close-ups of genitals taken to go, by the way, to Keith, which infuriates me. And I'll get to that later when I recognize that and how that fueled my escape. This is the first time I met my quote, sisters. I was asked to get naked in a room and put a blindfold on and Lauren led me downstairs. I was in her home and I took

the blindfold off to be sitting in a semi circle with five women that I knew from next year, but it didn't know well enough to be like, oh, cool, we're all naked, sitting cross-legged, with candles on a sheepskin rug. Like, okay, this isn't that weird. And then Lauren, going, guys, you have to get over your body issues. Just get over it.

We're all this all natural, we're sisters now, then we put our clothes on and had like a pot luck. A pot unlucky? Yes, exactly. And then she blindfolded us again and drove us around the neighborhood and brought us into Alice Max House, which I recognized right away because I was cheating

and looking underneath my blindfold and I recognized the carpet. I recognized the smell. I've been to her home enough that I knew, Allison's sense. And I was led into a room where it's just a massage table and very basic furniture. And we were told to get undressed.

Everyone got undressed except for Lauren and a woman who was like a doctor in the community. And that's when we were found out that we weren't getting a tattoo as I'd been told that it was actually a brand and it would be done without anesthetic. I knew that it was going to be something, I'd been told it would be painful, like I assumed the tattoo was going to be painful and this would be a bonding experience, but the details of that were left out in the main detail being that Laurent told us it was a symbol for the elements, that there was a horizon and a symbol for the mountains and the water, and that was a commitment to our growth and a connection to ourselves and our sisterhood and the earth and all this bullshit.

And then we went through it and the first person who lay on the table, I mean, you see, I can't help but... Yeah, of course. ... if I connect to it, but I have to say it was torture. I was watching somebody be electrocuted. It was her flesh was cut open with a cotterizing iron, it's not a brand. Even what they do to cattle, I think, is more humane than what was done to us. And it took about 45 minutes for her. And it wasn't 45 minutes of consecutive cutting. It was like she'd do a line and she'd have to stop.

And Lauren was reading, it sounded like scripture, honestly, it was all about like, guru, disciple and devotion and master and slave and higher principles and character and honor and all this like word-salty bullshit that I could not even tell you if I could remember it because we were disassociated and not even as disassociated as when I went. And by the time I went, I think I went third or fourth.

I don't remember. And meanwhile, the whole time I'm going, how the fuck do I get out of here? I don't have a car. And it'd be a drop me off at Lawrence hours earlier. It's dark. If I run with my, you know, maybe I could call a taxi. What am I going to say?

Meanwhile, I'm thinking, I committed to this. So I'm gas letting myself. We've been taught in Genescent SOP, I'm thinking, I committed to this. So I'm gaslighting myself. We've been taught in Genescent SOP, which ironically we thought we were looking at the roles and the relationships of the two genders and what our indoctrination was so we could break free of that indoctrination, be a new type of woman. Meanwhile, while there were lots of truths in it, Keith was planting his own fucked up misogynist hatred of women. And one of the beliefs I had is that women are flaky. And we don't uphold our word. And we're always looking for the back door. So I'm like, okay, here I am doing what I've been taught. I'm literally looking for the

back door. I have to stay. And I'm also the other than Lauren. I was the highest ranking woman of all the women there. The only green everyone else was orange, yellow, or white. And I said, okay, even Lauren pulled me aside at one point and was like, you gotta show them how it's done. And so I made a decision, like I'm gonna get it over with. I'm gonna lie in the table, I'm gonna show them how it's done.

I'm gonna get it over with. I saw that the more you moved, the more painful it was. And I just went into a disassociated, like when you're kind of floating and like, and then I was thinking about my son and giving birth to him and how fucking painful that was, which was really hard birth. And how much I loved him and it just went somewhere else. I went into a whole different place. And truthfully, I was proud of myself for what I had done.

I was like, I went from being, I don't want to do this. This is terrible. This is crazy. And then to opening my eyes and seeing Lauren look at me lovingly and being like, you're so proud of you. Like, you did so well and feeling what I actually do believe is her pure love, just terribly misguided because I've since forgiven Lauren. At the time, it was meaningful because I was, you know, somebody who completes a marathon,

I'm guessing, I've never done it, but like, you know, I didn't want to do it and then I did it and I'm so strong now. And that's what I believed I had done. But it was definitely a horrific, painful barbaric. I now see it for what it is. It was, you know, to create trauma bonding for people to also be ashamed, you know, like, for me to be public about this and speak see it for what it is. It was, you know, to create trauma bonding for people to also be ashamed.

That, you know, like, for me to be public about this and speak of it, when I did, I to admit that I did this and also like, there's video footage of me having this done to me. And I actually had to look at it when the doctor was on trial for her medical license, which three years later I had to look at this video footage, which by the way, all these men had to look at to decide whether or not she should keep her medical license, which three years later I had to look at this video footage, which by the way, all these men had to look at to decide whether or not she should keep her medical

license. Me totally naked being held down by my so-called sister as well. This brand goes into my body. Thank you for sharing that story. I just thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It's something that I, you know, obviously I wish I'd made different choices.

I wish I'd knowing what I know now. I probably wouldn't have ever been taken the five day because I felt pressured to take it. And I'd be like, Oh, you're pressuring me and making me feel like there's scarcity here to get me to do it. And no, thank you. That feels wrong. And I'm going to trust my gut.

So like, I know that about me now knowing what I know, but at the same time, it's hot tap and for me to wake up, ultimately, even though I didn't wake up right then, I woke up. So you go through the initiation. You have a more of an experience, but you refram it as we do. Yes. A survival technique. You refram it in the moment because we are not people who want to frame things as we're a victim.

And especially not NICM when you're indoctrinated to think there is no such thing as a victim. Yes. Correct. If you feel like a victim. Yes. Correct. If you feel like a victim, that's because you have done that to yourself. So you go home that night and we haven't addressed this yet, but Nippy, your husband, is also a nexium. Yes.

That's why all of there's no big shock from him, but you go home that night and is he aware of what happened to you that night on that night? No, he just thinks I'm having a girl's night with Lauren and some other women. And he was like, how is that night. No, he just thinks I'm having a girls night with Lauren and some other women. And he was like, how is that cool? Back to it. Like it was, meanwhile, we're not super connected

because I mean, we're just, we just, we're in a rough patch anyway in our relationship, but I couldn't tell him. And we at Lauren had hatched a plan to, like, we knew that actually we were going to be in separate cities for the next following weeks. And if he was doing a training in New York, I was going back to Vancouver. So I was going to, I mean, this never would have made sense.

But Lauren was trying to separate this thing, which eventually he would see from Albany. So I could keep it from him for a bit. That was the plan. I didn't go well. The plan did not go well. So what happened next? So then I was, I was ordered to start recruiting slaves myself. And I didn't want that.

And I was trying to figure out how to not. And there's a whole series of things where I had asked for somebody, the person who was like my best friend in the organization, even before. OK, well, if I'm going to have a lifetime vow, I want it to be this person. It's page in my book. And not her real name. And I was told, no, if I'm going to have a lifetime vow, I want it to be this person that's page in my book and not her real name.

And I was told, no, she's not available. And I slowly figured out, because I know her well, that she was definitely also in DOS, because I could tell she was responding to the drills at the same time, and her phone was on at night, and I just figured it out. It was pretty obvious who are the other women where we weren't supposed to know who the other women were,

except for her own sisterhood. And a lot of things happened in a very short period of time that were weirder and weirder. And Bonnie actually had, I got branded in March and Bonnie left at Believe in January. So Bonnie had already gone. And meanwhile, Mark's wife. Mark's original Mark II. Marked for Centio. Mark's wife.

Yeah. Okay. His wife. And because I was was what's called her upline green I was supposed to make sure she signs some documentation Which is also another red flag that when you leave you're supposed to say everything's fine and is essentially a gag order that you're not gonna speak of anything that ever happened ever in next year and She wouldn't get back to me about that and at the time I was totally happy for Bonnie that she was going back to LA to pursue her dreams. Meanwhile, everyone else was like shit talking her and being like how dare she, like she's a proctor, she's got responsibilities. I had always been one that secretively like my

inner pre-cult non-inductant itself was like we're doing these goals to fulfill our dreams. Someone wants to take the goals and like go be an actor or musician or whatever they should do that. And they were trying to keep her in Albany. So I'd been sent to get her to sign this paperwork and it was really weird that she wasn't getting back to me. So that was weird. Lauren was asking for more collateral. I was trying to figure out how to get out of it.

All these other things were happening in next game that I didn't like that Claire Bronfman was doing. Like, she wasn't paying us for the work that we'd done. So I was like generally unhappy and overworked and I wasn't okay with so many things, but also you couldn't express that. If you express it, like when I said to Claire, like I think it's important that we get paid for this work,

she said I was being entitled, which is another female toxic trait, according to Janice. So you can't complain. Janice is the like women's, we're going to teach you to be better women, women group. Yes. And so what what genes teaches all the women is that all of these controlling entitled victim, those are all female qualities that we need to like get rid of eliminate. So any concern you have that has to do with emotion or your rights is a toxic

feminine trait. Yes, even to raise a concern is a complaint, which is what women do. We need to develop more character and honor the men. On the other side, the men were developing their empathy and their softness. There was, again, some good things, right? On both sides and some really, really terrible toxic things. And when I was in it, I just couldn't see. I didn't like it. I knew that I could feel my view of women eroding.

And instead of feeling like positive towards my sisters, I'd be like, there's another flaky woman or like oblivious was another one. Like that women would just stand in the way and not know as if people were trying to get by and like oblivious woman. Like it was so bad that I would see that. I'm still rooting these things out five years later.

We all are. So Sarah, what people who don't know, don't know yet, is that the branding, the initiation, the master and slave situation was a literal pyramid scheme. Yes. And there was one person at the top of the pyramid. And that was Keith Ranieri. So tell us really what the point of DOS was. For Keith to lock down his women and to secure loyalty. Just before DOS started, if you look at the timeline in the history of Nexium, one of his right-hand women, his Kristen Keefe, who did all his legal stuff, and he was,

he was the mother of the child that he denied. We thought it was like a child that was brought in to be raised by the community, but it was actually Chris and child and Keith child, but that was hidden. We found that out later. So Chris had left in the middle of the night with their child and was like on the run. And I think he realized that he couldn't count on these women to stay. And I've since spoken to women who were in his inner circle before DOS.

And she said when she learned about DOS, she's like, well, that was just a formalized version of how things were before. He had collateral on them. They were all at his back and call, and they weren't saying, yes, master, I'm ready. But that's essentially what it was. They had to be available to him whenever he wanted.

And he basically formalized it. And he had told Kristen who told me when I got out that he'd wanted to start a blackmail, multi-level marketing MLM. So an amp appear mid-based on blackmail, which is what he did. That's what he did. That's what he did.

And he was having sex with, I don't think you got this assignment, but many of the new slaves, their assignment would be, yours might have been, don't ask for help. Some of these women their assignment would be, you know, years might have been, they're not asked for help. Some of these women's assignment would be ghost seduce Keith Feneary. So there were certain women in DOS whose job was to be available to the grand master sexual class.

Yes. And that's ultimately what woke me up to skip to that Bonnie help market out. And Mark started to see what was going on in Albany, which were, keep in mind I didn't live in Albany, so I missed a lot of this stuff. Meanwhile, Mark was leaving at a time when, even though I wanted out of DOS, my lease was over in Vancouver and I was looking at a new lease space, which meant, like, committing to another five-year chunk. And Mark's my business partner, and Mark's like, yeah, I'm leaving and I'm like, what the fuck? Why are you leaving?

And he wouldn't tell me unless I signed an NDA. And under that NDA, he shared with me what he knew about these assignments. And he'd found out about that through some people that had confided in him and Albany. So he knew about the sex. And under this NDA, I somehow eventually felt comfortable to tell him what I knew about the branding. But if you watch the vow, it takes some time for me to gear up to that because I'm so afraid to have my collateral be released. And I'm saying things like, well, if somebody was in this group and they, it was secret, how would they let somebody know?

Like I'm trying to hit him. But eventually we have an open conversation where we share what we both know because we'd all been siloed, which is a lot of how these groups operate. Nobody knows what the other groups are doing. It's like a terrorist cell. Yeah. And when they start talking to you about this, when body and marks start talking to you about this, like what the hell this isn't right, you resisted it because you said, if I took in what she said about him, about Keith Ranieri, if I question him, I'd have

to question everything about me. And I think that is so important. That's why people, they think that the first question about the group is like the little jenga piece that if I pull that out, the whole my whole ideology, my whole community, my whole life will crumble. So we avoid the obvious red flags. Yes, it's a self preservation piece. And that's why I believe that there's still people who are loyal, because if they really admit that they were duped, they have to A, recognize that they were wrong, and that's obviously a huge shit sandwich that I've had to eat multiple times over the years, but also that they were duped and that they were abused and that they abused people. And they were a part of not something that was was good or though there was good, but was also

very, very bad. And that's, you know, who wants to admit that? So that's why they're doubling down. No, Keith is good. Keith is good. Keith misunderstood. You know, that bad stuff's not true. That's all evidence planted by the FBI.

On all those women are lying. All of them are making it up. So when they're saying, Keith is good. Keith is good. What they're meaning is, no, I'm good, I'm good. Yes, I'm good. Yeah. Just to add one thing that I've recently learned about

is that a lot of these leaders know that people won't talk about it as I am now because there's so much shame involved. And the shame is induced by like, you know, the naked videos and the women that stuck through it to the end. We're going down to Mexico this is after he fled. I'm skipping a little bit ahead into the future.

You know what, let's stop there. Pod Squad, we're going to stop here. We're going to come back with Sarah because I just need to know more things. And I'm sure that you do too. And this is a super important conversation. So we're going to stop there. Come back next time. We'll be back with Sarah Edminson. We love you Pod Squad.

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