December 4, 2023 • 39 mins
Robert and Mia talk with journalist Sarah Berman about a matchmaking cult called Twin Flames Universe and their disturbing conversation therapy practices.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media. Oh Man, welcome back to it could
Happen here, a podcast about it meaning bad things happening here,
meaning you know here obviously here at cool Zone, we
(00:22):
have a little bit of a habit of talking about cults.
Some of you who have been listening to Behind the
Bastard since the beginning will remember how we kind of
started that series with several long episodes about a guy
named Keith Ranieri. And today we're here to talk with
a wonderful author and journalist, Sarah Berman, who has written
both about the Nexium cult and about a new cult
(00:44):
that some of you are probably familiar with if you
caught the recent Netflix documentary. Prime has a documentary out
too on the Twin Flames cult, and so we're going
to introduce why this is such an interesting cult. White's
kind of groundbreaking. But first, Sarah, welcome so much to
the show. Graham, Hey, Hey.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, Sarah, your book is called Don't Call It a Cult,
wonderful book about the Nexium cult, and yeah, you were
You are kind of the person who first I'm not
sure if you're the very first person to ever report
on Twin Flames, But you're certainly the person who broke
the story in a meaningful and detailed way. How did
you well, First off, we shuld probably start with how
(01:29):
would you describe twin Flames to people? Right?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So, twin Flames Universe began as sort of a YouTube
channel and a Facebook group that was all about finding
true love. So this group promises not only that you
find your true love, but also that you will find
career fulfillment and enlightenment and basically everything good will happen
to you. Miracles will happen only if you spend thousands
(01:55):
of dollars on their coursework and keep up with their
sort of spiritual homework, which is a never ending treadmill,
and eventually it sort of becomes, you know, an all
powerful control over people's lives, where they go, who they
interact with, even their life partner, even their gender identity.
(02:16):
So yeah, lots of people calling it a matchmaking cult.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, it's a matchmaking I mean. One of the things
that I think is interesting to me about the kind
of like rhetoric of the of the cult leaders, and
this is one that there do seem to be kind
of two people heading it up, a couple is the
idea that like they have the ability to see who
someone's soulmate is, and like that's a that's kind of
(02:45):
a it both sort of. I think the appeal this
has speaks to, among other things, kind of the deep
loneliness that a lot of younger people feel, you know,
as we're dealing with this kind of increasingly closed off,
isolated nature of society, especially since COVID, as well as
kind of mixing that with some of these you know,
much longer standing older cult traditions in a way that
(03:07):
felt really really interesting to me and also like something
that could only exist now. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, there's so much to impact there. So in their
early days in twenty fourteen, this couple Jeff and Shelia,
I mean Shell is actually a Megan, but Shelia is
the name she arrived at through some conscious journeying. Sure,
they have these videos where they just met and they
are in love and they are making eyes at each
other and this is something to attain. It was sort
(03:38):
of started as this you know, romantic YouTuber content, and
then they start selling Yes you can have this too,
all you have to do is buy our you know,
coursework and whatnot. And I think it does speak to,
especially during the pandemic, a sort of deep dark loneliness
in isolation that's happening where people are enticed by this
(04:02):
couple who they're just regular, you know, Michigan white people.
They're making eyes at each other. Doesn't look like anything
special to an outsider, but clearly, you know, thousands of
people have sort of lashed onto it. Have you know,
hoped that this secret knowledge that this group is giving them,
you know, will bring them happiness. And because it's sort
(04:25):
of an all encompassing ideology where if you even question
the group, well then you are definitely never going to
see your life partner and will probably see hell at
some point in your life, you know, it just creates
this perverse incentive to just keep pouring time and effort
into this group in a way that yeah, I don't
(04:45):
think could exist in any other timeframe, especially not through Zoom. Right,
so most of these classes that they sell are happening
on Zoom, just like you and I are on today,
so that you know, next could never achieve. Right, this
group has achieved a level of you know, connection and
(05:07):
I don't know, just getting into people's brain stems through
a laptop screen, which is incredible for our time.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, it's very I mean again, this is part of
what's so modern about it is that it appears to
work entirely like cults and particularly cult leaders are tend
to be such social phenomena. This is nearly always a
thing that involves person to person contact, and in fact,
one of the things any cult expert will tell you
is a hallmark of a cult is it's the focus
(05:36):
it puts on isolating members and perspective members away from
their friends and their family and keeping them under the
power of the cult leader at all times. And this
is very people are not all together, they're not all
living in one area, they're geographically isolated. The dynamics that
this reproduces itself with our parasocial dynamics, the same dynamics
podcast listeners have with like like like you know, it's
(05:58):
a more extreme version of that. But it's part of
this thing we see with twitch streamers, we see it
with like YouTubers, this kind of and it solves one
of the mysteries because I've watched this dock with a
couple of friends who kept being like, well, these people
don't seem charismatic. They don't seem this doesn't seem like,
it doesn't seem like they could be attaining this degree
of control over people. And I think part of what
(06:20):
explains that is just like, well, someone may not seem
charismatic when you're watching little clips of them in a documentary,
but when they're in your ears and you know, on
calls with you and stuff all day every day, your
body builds up like they get through your defenses that way.
Like that's how parasocial relationships kind of work.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Absolutely, Yeah, you just have the binging quality of how
people consume media these days. And it's the same for
you know, YouTube rabbit holes that radicalize sort of right
wing white men. So it's the same process. These folks
who I was speaking to, they were consuming up to
(07:01):
ten even fifteen hours of this content per day and
they were feeling like they had to keep up with
that just to maintain their coaching title or what have you. So, yes,
they have Jeff inside their head at all times. They
start speaking like him. You know, you can kind of
(07:21):
tell when an still involved member emails you that it
sounds just like the leaders. It is a yeah, fully saturating,
indoctrinating process. And I guess. Yeah, you don't have to
be particularly charismatic in person to achieve that kind of
(07:44):
saturation when you have the YouTube algorithm. You know. Unfortunately,
my YouTube algorithm is also ruined, so oh, my mess
up on YouTube is looking pretty It's yikes these days.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
No, I actually discuss a really effective method of for
my own research in various cults, which is I just
used my roommate's YouTube premium account, so I have ruined
his life, but it's not a problem for me. So
it's worked out really well, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I mean, I might try that solution, but I live
with my partners, so you might not appreciate. We'll see
how it goes, though.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I'm kind of curious how did you get on this story,
Like was what was your backstory there?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, so I was in the depths still of reporting
on Nexium. I don't believe the sentencing for Keith Rnieri
had happened yet at that point, so this was late
twenty nineteen early twenty twenty. One of the mothers was
the first to reach out to me, and she had
two daughters who are featured in the Netflix series in
(08:52):
the Group, and she had told me that she was
cut off from all contact. That the only contact she
did have with one of her daughters was when she
sent thousands of dollars. And so that to me right away,
like you said, you know, isolating people from their family
members who might you know, raise questions or you know,
(09:14):
want to know more about what's happening, asking for money
so blatantly, you know, and denying contact based on an
amount of money sent. That all sounded pretty bad to me,
and so I started looking into it. That mom pointed
me towards Elle, who is also featured in the Netflix series.
(09:37):
She's also Katie in the Vanity Fair piece that later
came out after our reporting, and it just sort of
snowballed from there. I'll put me in touch with I
would say, half a dozen ex members at that point,
some different mothers started contacting me because they all were
sort of in a group chat trying to figure out
(09:58):
how they could rea established content contact with their mostly daughters.
That was my origin story. We put out a piece
fairly quickly. I tried to get it out within a
month or two of that first contact.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, well that makes a lot of sense, and I
want to continue talking about this. We'll get into a
lot more, but first it's time for an ad break.
So here we go, ah, and we're back. Miyah. Did
(10:37):
you have anything you wanted to move into next? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So there are some parts of this that are very
familiar in the sense of the combination of Christianity and
weird New Age spiritualism stuff. I think it is a
pretty old combination. I mean, the Moody is very famously
sort of pioneered this thing, and you know, you can
go back eight hundreds and find versions of it. The
thing that I think is interesting about it is the
(11:05):
way that they've effectively been doing conversion therapy on people.
And I don't know, this is something I haven't really
seen before from a cult, and I guess, I guess
I think the way into this is talking about the
sort of divine masculine, divine feminine stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, I agree that this seemed new and you know,
sort of bizarre to me. And certainly I've already seen
on Twitter some right wing takes on it that give
me a lot of uncomfortable feelings because they're obviously taking
the wrong opposite lesson. You know, when I guess when
(11:50):
I watched this, I see see you can't tell someone
what their gender is. You know, it doesn't work, It
falls apart, it doesn't make sense. But I think, yeah,
something that's been taken away in some smaller circles is that,
oh see, you can coach someone to change their gender,
(12:11):
and that's you know, blame teachers, blame whoever for doing that.
So this particular group does have a divine masculine and
divine feminine teaching that used to be a little more flimsy.
So in the early days they just said, if you're
in a queer couple, it just means one of you
(12:33):
has the more wearing pants vibe. You know, it wasn't
supposed to literally translate to a gender expression or a
gender identity. But later on, when you know, you had
this growing amount of you know, siss women who are
(12:54):
I mean, they're interested in finding their man, and that's
not happening because, you know, the group makes it very
hard to actually meet outside people. If you're on this
constant treadmill of doing spiritual homework, you don't have time
to meet you people, and maybe when you talk about it,
it's pushing people away. So eventually, in late twenty nineteen
(13:21):
they started actually making pairings and to get around the
fact that, you know, folks said, well, that's not my
you know, orientation, I'm not attracted to women. They started
actually telling people, well that you're the divine masculine and actually,
you know, you, going back your whole life, probably knew
this all along, and we're just revealing something to you.
(13:45):
And that sat the wrong way in a lot of cases,
and a lot of people left around that time, but
they successfully paired up I think more than a dozen
people around that time, and they continued to do pairings
into twenty twenty, and some folks did come along on
(14:07):
the journey. They did in some cases pursue top surgery
and hormones and have changed their names, changed their pronouns.
It's yeah, it's not. Obviously, there are moms who are
just barely coming to terms with this, and you know,
they're not always using the right language, and they're a
(14:29):
little confused, you know, and that confusion was often used
as a reason to cut off all contact, you know,
say hey, mom, you're transphobic, you know, and push them aside.
And so I think it is new in some sense,
but it's also very old in the sense that cults
often create a brand new identity for people, right, Like
(14:50):
new names when you join a cult is not a
new thing. That that's something that a lot of you know,
and changing hair, right.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Shaving the heads, that's like one of the O cult exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, So I mean this is I guess, an updated
version where I mean it's kind of smart in a
way that like people might be afraid to question it, right,
Like you're hiding behind something that sounds very progressive and
very inclusive. And that's what a lot of cults do,
is they hide in very progressive spacesh But yeah, it's
(15:26):
a lot. It's a lot to take in, and I
definitely like to bring experts up to speed on this
and get their perspectives because I don't know everything, you know,
I can't possibly pretend to know what's in someone's heart
and mind and body, you know, at any time. So
everyone is just working through it. Like one of the
(15:49):
experts in the documentary says, you know, some of these
folks could have been transmit all along, but the way
that they're being told to do it is can starting
to say the least.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, And I mean I think there's some interesting stuff
with how they were able to do this, which is
even before they started forcely transitioning people, there was this
is I think the most trans people I've ever seen
in a cult like this, Like the number of people
who were trans going in was really high, and I
(16:22):
suspect that was how they were able to sort of
like like you know, like one of the people in
the documentary was talking about how she was like a
transforman she was being basically like tokenized by the group
as this like hey, we're like trans inclusive thing. And
I wonder how much of the way they were able
to do this is from basically taking the firsthand experience
(16:44):
of like actual trans people and then like using that
to try to convince people of this really weird sort
of essentialist like we've decided that you're the divide and masculine,
so you have to transition to be a and now stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
The origin story of it is you're right in reaching
out to LGBTQ type communities, So folks like our Celia
who you see in the documentary, and also Jesse who
you see in the Netflix documentary. They were sent out
recruiting in queer spaces, so any type of queer Facebook group,
Twitter user, you know, YouTuber. They were in the comments
(17:26):
there talking about their twin Flame journey and talking about
how queer inclusive it was. So they were actively doing
that and it's fascinating to see. You know, you can
go back through Twitter history and find, you know, how
they were phrasing these things. You know, like that was
their job basically to do outreach for the group in
(17:47):
queer spaces. They also did lots of PTSD spaces, former
military spaces. You know, they really like tried to find
any slice of a person who might need a community,
who might be lonely, and sort of feed them into
the group. And you're right, I think if you have
a bunch of queer, open minded people in a space,
(18:11):
there's a lot you can do with you know, suggestion,
There's a lot you can do with a deck of
Tarot cards. It seems a lot of these, you know,
gender conversions started with a tarot reading where they would
just hold up a card that represented them or their
supposed partner and you know, sort of building off of that.
(18:33):
So it is it's new and old in so many
ways because yeah, you're just using the divine to basically
just dictate any aspect of someone's life. You know what
they eat, what they wear, where they go everything.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, and I mean it's also we're talking about like
how how much of this kind of plays on loneliness,
the fact that people are desperate for companionship, that particularly
younger people are like dating less or more socially isolated,
and like, if you want to push that up to
the nth degree, you take a group of people who
(19:12):
is under siege right now and so particularly having trouble
like being safely out and around people right like, you
give them what looks like it's a safe, welcoming community
that's supportive of them, and if especially they have not
had that. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's deeply insidious
(19:33):
and evil.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I would say, it's powerful stuff. I would say when
I go on the Facebook group, you know, I'm blocked now,
but when I could, it would you know, show folks
really deep into a fantasy, you know, like they want
a perfect life for themselves where they are openly welcomed
with open arms, where the people that they care about
(19:57):
care about them back, you know, and that's often not
actually the case in their home life, but it seems
to be real on this Facebook page, and they think,
you know, if I just put in the work, this
will happen for me, that straight guy who I'm into
is going to come around and see that we're twin flames.
And so yeah, it definitely also feeds into a bit
(20:19):
of fantasy and delusion. That's you know, I think maybe
a symptom of us being so isolated in our you know,
pandemic brain spaces.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Speaking of isolated shit, Well, it's an AD, it's an
AD break. I don't I don't know anything it goes
with that, But here's some ads. Ah and we're back. Sorry,
(20:54):
you've just encountered some of our classic incombatant AD transitions.
But what's not incompetent is your reporting on this subject.
And I'm I'm curious as you realize how potentially a
lot of what's going on in this cult, with this
divide masculine divide feminine stuff, could, if not handled carefully,
(21:16):
play into some really pernicious culture war stuff that's going
on in the country right now. How do you kind of,
like how consciously did you sort of work to avoid that.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, that is definitely something I'm worried about, is that
this could feed into some sort of culture war talking point.
And you know, you're seeing the seeds of that. If
you search Twitter very deeply, you can find it. I
guess X, I'm calling it Twitter. It's still Twitter to me.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, it's still Twitter.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
It's only acceptable dead naming.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Speaking of dead naming, yes, So I definitely wanted to
be as careful as possible, listen to trans people as
much as possible, you know. So that's why our Celia
was one of the first folks that I talked to,
and you know, she had just such an interesting understanding
of this because she, you know, had transitioned before she
(22:15):
came into this group, and she was able to witness
so much of the coaching that was happening. And I'm
just so grateful for someone who goes through that ringer
and still is able to articulate what happened afterwards, because
you know, not everybody comes around to understanding it as
deeply as she did. So that was my main, you
(22:37):
know thing, was I was going to listen to trans
people and then yeah, I guess just trying to sort
out what was the ideology of the group, how that
was being you know, I guess executed, and yeah, just
trying to come from this expert perspective that Yeah, yeah,
(23:00):
nobody can tell you what your gender is, and this
is actually an example of that. It was hard to
wrap my head around and I still worry about it.
I'm still worrying about my words kind of right now.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Yeah, that was something in the documentary that like you
could see the filmmakers kind of like you can you
can see them kind of going back and forth between
wanting to use people getting top surgery as this kind
of like shock factor thing, but then also like at
(23:33):
the same time being like wait, hold on, like this
is you know, this is something that you can very
very easily like be a right wing transphobe and just
like take a clip of and put on the internet
and be like, hey, like we need to stop gender
clinics from being able to do this. And I don't know.
I think I think you've handled it pretty well, but
(23:56):
I don't know, like this is this is something that
is like I think like one of the important things
is like this cult is ran by SIS people, and
this is you know what. I think it was a
good decision for you to talk about it in terms
of conversion therapy, because that's a lot closer to what's
(24:18):
happening than people transitioning and you know, I mean like
it's I don't know, like I would say. The thing
that's complicated about it, right is you know you it's
you can't talk. It's really really it's almost impossible to
like talk to the people who are going through this
and get an understanding of what their sense of their
gender is. I mean, like I've I watched a couple
(24:40):
of the videos that they made and like, I don't know,
it's it's it's really difficult to like it's it's it's
easy to play arm tre psychologist with it, and I
don't want to do that. And so yeah, I think
I think you've been walking a difficult line. And yeah,
I keep.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
My hands off that too. You know, like I am
not going to tell any one of those folks, you know,
Gabe Ray what's going on in their brains and bodies.
I just do happen to know about the systematic sort
of coaching that they were, you know, exposed to. So,
you know, for in the case of Jesse Hersey, she
(25:22):
had months and months of coaching around letting go of
her entire life, her entire identity starting over, let go
of any image of what you think your twin flame
could be right, And so if you're doing that, you know,
and eventually folks do sort of acquiesque. I think it's
similar in a gender conversion coaching situation. Some people acquiesque,
(25:46):
you know, they get into a high pressure situation, they're
being told who they are, They're being told there will
be consequences if they, you know, go back to their
normal queer self. So so that actually does get somebody
to change, but in a beer based situation. So I
can speak to the coaching, but yes, I'm never going
(26:08):
to be a person telling anyone what their gender is
because we don't know. Hopefully, you know, they can break
free of what I think is you know, pretty manipulative
coercive practices and then they can tell us more about
who they are.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, And I mean I think the other thing I'll
say about that is like, well, I mean, we know,
just on a societal level, that it's possible to force
people to live as a gender that they're not and
to identify themselves as that gender by systematic social pressure.
And we know this because this is the story of
like every transperson who's ever lived, right and totally you know,
and like it sucks, like it really fucking sucks, like
(26:51):
having someone force a gender on you. And I really
hope that these people, like I hope these people find
fin and who they are and you know, whatever form
that takes, that they're not being coerced into it, because like, yeah,
and this is something I think that was in I
(27:11):
think it was in the Netflix documentary that people were
talking about. This is like, you know, in terms of
people who could understand what this is like, Like I
think other trans people are probably some of the only
people in the world who actually do, like even sort
of understand what it's like to be forced to be
a gender if that you're not. And so yeah, I'm
(27:32):
hoping that this develops in a way like of solidarity
and not of weaponization by right wingers.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
But I mean, I think you guys have done all
you could reasonably do to avoid that, like the culture
war is going to do what the culture war does.
I wanted to get into Keith Ranieri a little bit
and kind of how what went on with the Nexium cult,
because he's a friend of the pod over here a
(28:00):
lot about the details of what he got up to.
He's obviously probably the biggest recent cult in the US.
And like us popular culture at least, you know, there's
a couple other little bit of other competition for that title,
but not a ton. And yeah, I wanted to talk
to you a little bit about how some of how
(28:20):
people's awareness of that, because like, obviously, given the media environment,
all the people getting pulled in by the Twin Flames
cult were aware to some extent of cult dynamics and
probably of this story of this cult that is not unrelated.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Definitely. Yeah, So there is a bit of stories colliding.
When you write about cults, there's only so many of them.
Inevitably stories start to cross over. So I was still, yeah,
covering Vnexium trial and you know, folloout sentencings when this
story came across my desk, you know, and even the
(28:58):
first person who talked to me about it, it was like,
I think it's similar, you know, I think their practices
are similar. And sure enough, I go and look at
this mind alignment process and you're right, it's it's kind
of similar to auditing, and scientology is kind of similar
to you know, what Nexium was doing.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So it's.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, the tools of manipulation are common across many of
these groups, and I would say, you know, not just
ex members of Twin Flames, but even potentially the leaders
of Twin Flames have studied other groups, including Nexium. There
is the detail in the documentary that Jeff actually made
(29:39):
folks in the group write an essay about why Keith R.
Nieri was a cult leader but why he was not one,
based on watching the vow in seduced. So that's just, yeah,
a world's colliding for me. But yeah, I think Nexium
has in some ways brought a certain understanding. So of
(30:00):
the sources I was talking to, yeah, had an understanding
of how that worked. And you know what made that wrong,
what made that coercion. Twin Flames doesn't have as many
of the aspects as nexiums. So they don't have a
blackmail program, right, there's no branding in Twin Flames universe.
(30:21):
And you know their diet plan was actually you know,
load up on calories. Right, So there's some various differences
that you know, maybe Jeff studied and thought he could
fly under the radar with that. I don't know. I
don't know Jeff's motivations. He has only sent me long,
rambling emails. He has never agreed to an interview. But yes,
(30:47):
there's so much commonality, including the lawsuits that came out
of this. So when I reported on this in twenty twenty,
immediately after our first story, twin Flames Universe sent a
bunch of threatening letters to all of who they suspected
(31:07):
was cooperating with my reporting. So this was a group
of some thirty five people. I definitely didn't interview all
of them, but they were suspected collaborators. And it basically said,
if you do not retract your story within twenty four
hours and write a public apology, we are going to
publish very damning information about you, and we might pursue
(31:32):
a lawsuit. And this letter was not signed by a lawyer,
you know.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So signed legit.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, in reporting on it, which we did, and of
course nobody retracted, but sure enough, a couple months after that,
they did file a defamation suit against I want to say,
seven or eight members and one mom, And of course
(32:00):
that got thrown out. But that's the next you and
playbook is sue sue folks until they don't speak to
anyone anymore. Right, So it's a silencing tactic and it worked.
It really shook people up. I definitely wanted to give
people space after that. Yeah, it was definitely deja vus.
(32:20):
I guess to see that many lawsuits because there were
two separate ones both thrown out.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, I mean, and that's like something I've had to
like coach some some younger journalists and stuff through too,
because it's a favorite tactic of a lot of terrible people,
like send out legal threats and like, this is not
legal advice. You should always consult a lawyer. But the
vast majority of threats like that that are sent out
cannot be backed up to any realistic extent. Again, don't
(32:49):
ever assume that always consult a lawyer about this sort
of thing. But like the fact that somebody sends you
a we're going to sue you or like a cease
and assist does not mean they can actually hurt you, right,
It just means like for a lot of people, that's
like a go to sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, but it does evoke emotions.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
In the Netflix, stuy, and it does mean you've got
to reach out to a lawyer, which is scary, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yes, yes, thankfully we had vice lawyers that on that one,
but I don't know. In the Netflix documentary, Jeff actually
names me, you know, and tries to intimidate me by name.
And that was actually cut from a much longer video,
And I have to say, when it first came out
(33:36):
it did make me want a cuke. Now when I
see it in the series, it makes me laugh. But
it Yeah, you can really intimidate someone with that stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Sure, I think we should probably end on kind of
talking about where things are now, because again, if you've
watched the documentary, I think the thing that was brought
up to me by a couple of people I know
who watched it was like, so, wait, they're so just
out there doing it.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Used to when stuff like this gets covered, they're being
some sort of satisfying narrative arc. They've been charged, they're
in you know, prison, they're on the run. But this like,
they're just continuing to do cult stuff. And I think
part of like one of the things that is unfortunate.
It's just I'm not a law expert. Again, but just
from what I'm looked at, it's not clear to me
(34:21):
that they've broken a law in a way that's going
to be easy to come after them for.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yeah, So this is the interesting thing about Twin Flames
universe is. It does sort of straddle this line between
you know, it's not nexium. They weren't clear up, they.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Haven't abducted people, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
They haven't risen to that level. Although there are folks
who are in this group who believe they were trafficked,
which is an interesting perspective because they weren't able to
choose the person that they were having sexual contact with,
that they didn't even get to control when or how
that sexual will contact happened. It would take I think,
(35:04):
you know, a very ambitious prosecutor to take on that
kind of case. But back in twenty twenty, some of
these moms were already calling you know, the FBI and
the local Farmington Hills police. Farmington Hills has been like,
this is not our jurisdiction. If anything like, go to
the FBI. We haven't heard any particular updates from that,
(35:27):
you know case. Certainly, folks have said things to me
that sound a bit like fraud. You know, wire fraud
is a very broad concept. I don't know if that's
actually the case. I am not a lawyer, I'm not
a prosecutor, but definitely I think the filmmakers behind the
Netflix documentary in particular, think that this is up to
(35:50):
the FBI. They should be taking action, and they want
their documentary to spur that action. So yeah, we'll see
what happens. I you know, am as I said, not
an expert, not a lawyer, but certainly a lot of
the things that I've heard about sound very concerning and
very similar.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, I mean, and I yeah, it's tough because, like
I mean, I do. I will say I would be
shocked if there's not an active FBI investigation purely based
on how how popular the documentaries have been. Right, Like
that doesn't mean anything will actually happen, but at this
point I would be shocked if they were not seriously
(36:33):
looking into it, just because it's like they're probably getting
hassled by a bunch of people.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yes, and I mean it is a very culty thing
that they also collect everything, you know, video of everything
they've done.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
There's a lot to look into.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
The Yes, the hard drive that one of the folks
in the documentary named Keeley collected was literally called the
Holy Grail. Right nextium for Keith Ranieri, his you know,
damning evidence was called Studies. So I feel like this
is the studies hard drive yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
In that case, Well, we'll continue to all look into
this and excited to kind of see hopefully eventually some
sort of justice being done, although that's always a lot
to ask for out of the world. Yeah, well, Mia,
did you have anything else you wanted to get into.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I think that's basically everything.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Okay, And Sarah, did you have anything else you wanted
to make sure to mention?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Well, I would just like to mention that, you know,
having a belief about something like a soulmate is not
necessarily a bad thing. I don't want people to feel
stupid for having weird beliefs. If you open your third
eye and you know, believe your partner has been you know,
in your dreams, since, that's fine to me. I don't
(38:02):
want to disparage that kind of person. It's the systematic
coersion that you know, I'm particularly concerned about in my reporting. Yeah,
but yeah, maybe you could check out my book it's
called Don't Call It a Cult. Yeah, about the Nexium case.
You can follow me on Twitter Sarah Burns b E
r MS not X I'm dead naming Twitter again. Yeah, Yeah,
(38:30):
that's about it.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
All right. Well, everyone, that's been Another episode of it
could happen here Until next time, Why don't you go
happen somewhere else?
Speaker 2 (38:45):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly,
coolzonemedia dot com, slash sources.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Thanks for listening.
Al Zone Media. Oh Man, welcome back to it could
Happen here, a podcast about it meaning bad things happening here,
meaning you know here obviously here at cool Zone, we
(00:22):
have a little bit of a habit of talking about cults.
Some of you who have been listening to Behind the
Bastard since the beginning will remember how we kind of
started that series with several long episodes about a guy
named Keith Ranieri. And today we're here to talk with
a wonderful author and journalist, Sarah Berman, who has written
both about the Nexium cult and about a new cult
(00:44):
that some of you are probably familiar with if you
caught the recent Netflix documentary. Prime has a documentary out
too on the Twin Flames cult, and so we're going
to introduce why this is such an interesting cult. White's
kind of groundbreaking. But first, Sarah, welcome so much to
the show. Graham, Hey, Hey.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
So good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, Sarah, your book is called Don't Call It a Cult,
wonderful book about the Nexium cult, and yeah, you were
You are kind of the person who first I'm not
sure if you're the very first person to ever report
on Twin Flames, But you're certainly the person who broke
the story in a meaningful and detailed way. How did
you well, First off, we shuld probably start with how
(01:29):
would you describe twin Flames to people? Right?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So, twin Flames Universe began as sort of a YouTube
channel and a Facebook group that was all about finding
true love. So this group promises not only that you
find your true love, but also that you will find
career fulfillment and enlightenment and basically everything good will happen
to you. Miracles will happen only if you spend thousands
(01:55):
of dollars on their coursework and keep up with their
sort of spiritual homework, which is a never ending treadmill,
and eventually it sort of becomes, you know, an all
powerful control over people's lives, where they go, who they
interact with, even their life partner, even their gender identity.
(02:16):
So yeah, lots of people calling it a matchmaking cult.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, it's a matchmaking I mean. One of the things
that I think is interesting to me about the kind
of like rhetoric of the of the cult leaders, and
this is one that there do seem to be kind
of two people heading it up, a couple is the
idea that like they have the ability to see who
someone's soulmate is, and like that's a that's kind of
(02:45):
a it both sort of. I think the appeal this
has speaks to, among other things, kind of the deep
loneliness that a lot of younger people feel, you know,
as we're dealing with this kind of increasingly closed off,
isolated nature of society, especially since COVID, as well as
kind of mixing that with some of these you know,
much longer standing older cult traditions in a way that
(03:07):
felt really really interesting to me and also like something
that could only exist now. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, there's so much to impact there. So in their
early days in twenty fourteen, this couple Jeff and Shelia,
I mean Shell is actually a Megan, but Shelia is
the name she arrived at through some conscious journeying. Sure,
they have these videos where they just met and they
are in love and they are making eyes at each
other and this is something to attain. It was sort
(03:38):
of started as this you know, romantic YouTuber content, and
then they start selling Yes you can have this too,
all you have to do is buy our you know,
coursework and whatnot. And I think it does speak to,
especially during the pandemic, a sort of deep dark loneliness
in isolation that's happening where people are enticed by this
(04:02):
couple who they're just regular, you know, Michigan white people.
They're making eyes at each other. Doesn't look like anything
special to an outsider, but clearly, you know, thousands of
people have sort of lashed onto it. Have you know,
hoped that this secret knowledge that this group is giving them,
you know, will bring them happiness. And because it's sort
(04:25):
of an all encompassing ideology where if you even question
the group, well then you are definitely never going to
see your life partner and will probably see hell at
some point in your life, you know, it just creates
this perverse incentive to just keep pouring time and effort
into this group in a way that yeah, I don't
(04:45):
think could exist in any other timeframe, especially not through Zoom. Right,
so most of these classes that they sell are happening
on Zoom, just like you and I are on today,
so that you know, next could never achieve. Right, this
group has achieved a level of you know, connection and
(05:07):
I don't know, just getting into people's brain stems through
a laptop screen, which is incredible for our time.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, it's very I mean again, this is part of
what's so modern about it is that it appears to
work entirely like cults and particularly cult leaders are tend
to be such social phenomena. This is nearly always a
thing that involves person to person contact, and in fact,
one of the things any cult expert will tell you
is a hallmark of a cult is it's the focus
(05:36):
it puts on isolating members and perspective members away from
their friends and their family and keeping them under the
power of the cult leader at all times. And this
is very people are not all together, they're not all
living in one area, they're geographically isolated. The dynamics that
this reproduces itself with our parasocial dynamics, the same dynamics
podcast listeners have with like like like you know, it's
(05:58):
a more extreme version of that. But it's part of
this thing we see with twitch streamers, we see it
with like YouTubers, this kind of and it solves one
of the mysteries because I've watched this dock with a
couple of friends who kept being like, well, these people
don't seem charismatic. They don't seem this doesn't seem like,
it doesn't seem like they could be attaining this degree
of control over people. And I think part of what
(06:20):
explains that is just like, well, someone may not seem
charismatic when you're watching little clips of them in a documentary,
but when they're in your ears and you know, on
calls with you and stuff all day every day, your
body builds up like they get through your defenses that way.
Like that's how parasocial relationships kind of work.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Absolutely, Yeah, you just have the binging quality of how
people consume media these days. And it's the same for
you know, YouTube rabbit holes that radicalize sort of right
wing white men. So it's the same process. These folks
who I was speaking to, they were consuming up to
(07:01):
ten even fifteen hours of this content per day and
they were feeling like they had to keep up with
that just to maintain their coaching title or what have you. So, yes,
they have Jeff inside their head at all times. They
start speaking like him. You know, you can kind of
(07:21):
tell when an still involved member emails you that it
sounds just like the leaders. It is a yeah, fully saturating,
indoctrinating process. And I guess. Yeah, you don't have to
be particularly charismatic in person to achieve that kind of
(07:44):
saturation when you have the YouTube algorithm. You know. Unfortunately,
my YouTube algorithm is also ruined, so oh, my mess
up on YouTube is looking pretty It's yikes these days.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
No, I actually discuss a really effective method of for
my own research in various cults, which is I just
used my roommate's YouTube premium account, so I have ruined
his life, but it's not a problem for me. So
it's worked out really well, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I mean, I might try that solution, but I live
with my partners, so you might not appreciate. We'll see
how it goes, though.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I'm kind of curious how did you get on this story,
Like was what was your backstory there?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, so I was in the depths still of reporting
on Nexium. I don't believe the sentencing for Keith Rnieri
had happened yet at that point, so this was late
twenty nineteen early twenty twenty. One of the mothers was
the first to reach out to me, and she had
two daughters who are featured in the Netflix series in
(08:52):
the Group, and she had told me that she was
cut off from all contact. That the only contact she
did have with one of her daughters was when she
sent thousands of dollars. And so that to me right away,
like you said, you know, isolating people from their family
members who might you know, raise questions or you know,
(09:14):
want to know more about what's happening, asking for money
so blatantly, you know, and denying contact based on an
amount of money sent. That all sounded pretty bad to me,
and so I started looking into it. That mom pointed
me towards Elle, who is also featured in the Netflix series.
(09:37):
She's also Katie in the Vanity Fair piece that later
came out after our reporting, and it just sort of
snowballed from there. I'll put me in touch with I
would say, half a dozen ex members at that point,
some different mothers started contacting me because they all were
sort of in a group chat trying to figure out
(09:58):
how they could rea established content contact with their mostly daughters.
That was my origin story. We put out a piece
fairly quickly. I tried to get it out within a
month or two of that first contact.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, well that makes a lot of sense, and I
want to continue talking about this. We'll get into a
lot more, but first it's time for an ad break.
So here we go, ah, and we're back. Miyah. Did
(10:37):
you have anything you wanted to move into next? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So there are some parts of this that are very
familiar in the sense of the combination of Christianity and
weird New Age spiritualism stuff. I think it is a
pretty old combination. I mean, the Moody is very famously
sort of pioneered this thing, and you know, you can
go back eight hundreds and find versions of it. The
thing that I think is interesting about it is the
(11:05):
way that they've effectively been doing conversion therapy on people.
And I don't know, this is something I haven't really
seen before from a cult, and I guess, I guess
I think the way into this is talking about the
sort of divine masculine, divine feminine stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, I agree that this seemed new and you know,
sort of bizarre to me. And certainly I've already seen
on Twitter some right wing takes on it that give
me a lot of uncomfortable feelings because they're obviously taking
the wrong opposite lesson. You know, when I guess when
(11:50):
I watched this, I see see you can't tell someone
what their gender is. You know, it doesn't work, It
falls apart, it doesn't make sense. But I think, yeah,
something that's been taken away in some smaller circles is that,
oh see, you can coach someone to change their gender,
(12:11):
and that's you know, blame teachers, blame whoever for doing that.
So this particular group does have a divine masculine and
divine feminine teaching that used to be a little more flimsy.
So in the early days they just said, if you're
in a queer couple, it just means one of you
(12:33):
has the more wearing pants vibe. You know, it wasn't
supposed to literally translate to a gender expression or a
gender identity. But later on, when you know, you had
this growing amount of you know, siss women who are
(12:54):
I mean, they're interested in finding their man, and that's
not happening because, you know, the group makes it very
hard to actually meet outside people. If you're on this
constant treadmill of doing spiritual homework, you don't have time
to meet you people, and maybe when you talk about it,
it's pushing people away. So eventually, in late twenty nineteen
(13:21):
they started actually making pairings and to get around the
fact that, you know, folks said, well, that's not my
you know, orientation, I'm not attracted to women. They started
actually telling people, well that you're the divine masculine and actually,
you know, you, going back your whole life, probably knew
this all along, and we're just revealing something to you.
(13:45):
And that sat the wrong way in a lot of cases,
and a lot of people left around that time, but
they successfully paired up I think more than a dozen
people around that time, and they continued to do pairings
into twenty twenty, and some folks did come along on
(14:07):
the journey. They did in some cases pursue top surgery
and hormones and have changed their names, changed their pronouns.
It's yeah, it's not. Obviously, there are moms who are
just barely coming to terms with this, and you know,
they're not always using the right language, and they're a
(14:29):
little confused, you know, and that confusion was often used
as a reason to cut off all contact, you know,
say hey, mom, you're transphobic, you know, and push them aside.
And so I think it is new in some sense,
but it's also very old in the sense that cults
often create a brand new identity for people, right, Like
(14:50):
new names when you join a cult is not a
new thing. That that's something that a lot of you know,
and changing hair, right.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Shaving the heads, that's like one of the O cult exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, So I mean this is I guess, an updated
version where I mean it's kind of smart in a
way that like people might be afraid to question it, right,
Like you're hiding behind something that sounds very progressive and
very inclusive. And that's what a lot of cults do,
is they hide in very progressive spacesh But yeah, it's
(15:26):
a lot. It's a lot to take in, and I
definitely like to bring experts up to speed on this
and get their perspectives because I don't know everything, you know,
I can't possibly pretend to know what's in someone's heart
and mind and body, you know, at any time. So
everyone is just working through it. Like one of the
(15:49):
experts in the documentary says, you know, some of these
folks could have been transmit all along, but the way
that they're being told to do it is can starting
to say the least.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, And I mean I think there's some interesting stuff
with how they were able to do this, which is
even before they started forcely transitioning people, there was this
is I think the most trans people I've ever seen
in a cult like this, Like the number of people
who were trans going in was really high, and I
(16:22):
suspect that was how they were able to sort of
like like you know, like one of the people in
the documentary was talking about how she was like a
transforman she was being basically like tokenized by the group
as this like hey, we're like trans inclusive thing. And
I wonder how much of the way they were able
to do this is from basically taking the firsthand experience
(16:44):
of like actual trans people and then like using that
to try to convince people of this really weird sort
of essentialist like we've decided that you're the divide and masculine,
so you have to transition to be a and now stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
The origin story of it is you're right in reaching
out to LGBTQ type communities, So folks like our Celia
who you see in the documentary, and also Jesse who
you see in the Netflix documentary. They were sent out
recruiting in queer spaces, so any type of queer Facebook group,
Twitter user, you know, YouTuber. They were in the comments
(17:26):
there talking about their twin Flame journey and talking about
how queer inclusive it was. So they were actively doing
that and it's fascinating to see. You know, you can
go back through Twitter history and find, you know, how
they were phrasing these things. You know, like that was
their job basically to do outreach for the group in
(17:47):
queer spaces. They also did lots of PTSD spaces, former
military spaces. You know, they really like tried to find
any slice of a person who might need a community,
who might be lonely, and sort of feed them into
the group. And you're right, I think if you have
a bunch of queer, open minded people in a space,
(18:11):
there's a lot you can do with you know, suggestion,
There's a lot you can do with a deck of
Tarot cards. It seems a lot of these, you know,
gender conversions started with a tarot reading where they would
just hold up a card that represented them or their
supposed partner and you know, sort of building off of that.
(18:33):
So it is it's new and old in so many
ways because yeah, you're just using the divine to basically
just dictate any aspect of someone's life. You know what
they eat, what they wear, where they go everything.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, and I mean it's also we're talking about like
how how much of this kind of plays on loneliness,
the fact that people are desperate for companionship, that particularly
younger people are like dating less or more socially isolated,
and like, if you want to push that up to
the nth degree, you take a group of people who
(19:12):
is under siege right now and so particularly having trouble
like being safely out and around people right like, you
give them what looks like it's a safe, welcoming community
that's supportive of them, and if especially they have not
had that. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's deeply insidious
(19:33):
and evil.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I would say, it's powerful stuff. I would say when
I go on the Facebook group, you know, I'm blocked now,
but when I could, it would you know, show folks
really deep into a fantasy, you know, like they want
a perfect life for themselves where they are openly welcomed
with open arms, where the people that they care about
(19:57):
care about them back, you know, and that's often not
actually the case in their home life, but it seems
to be real on this Facebook page, and they think,
you know, if I just put in the work, this
will happen for me, that straight guy who I'm into
is going to come around and see that we're twin flames.
And so yeah, it definitely also feeds into a bit
(20:19):
of fantasy and delusion. That's you know, I think maybe
a symptom of us being so isolated in our you know,
pandemic brain spaces.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Speaking of isolated shit, Well, it's an AD, it's an
AD break. I don't I don't know anything it goes
with that, But here's some ads. Ah and we're back. Sorry,
(20:54):
you've just encountered some of our classic incombatant AD transitions.
But what's not incompetent is your reporting on this subject.
And I'm I'm curious as you realize how potentially a
lot of what's going on in this cult, with this
divide masculine divide feminine stuff, could, if not handled carefully,
(21:16):
play into some really pernicious culture war stuff that's going
on in the country right now. How do you kind of,
like how consciously did you sort of work to avoid that.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, that is definitely something I'm worried about, is that
this could feed into some sort of culture war talking point.
And you know, you're seeing the seeds of that. If
you search Twitter very deeply, you can find it. I
guess X, I'm calling it Twitter. It's still Twitter to me.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, it's still Twitter.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
It's only acceptable dead naming.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Speaking of dead naming, yes, So I definitely wanted to
be as careful as possible, listen to trans people as
much as possible, you know. So that's why our Celia
was one of the first folks that I talked to,
and you know, she had just such an interesting understanding
of this because she, you know, had transitioned before she
(22:15):
came into this group, and she was able to witness
so much of the coaching that was happening. And I'm
just so grateful for someone who goes through that ringer
and still is able to articulate what happened afterwards, because
you know, not everybody comes around to understanding it as
deeply as she did. So that was my main, you
(22:37):
know thing, was I was going to listen to trans
people and then yeah, I guess just trying to sort
out what was the ideology of the group, how that
was being you know, I guess executed, and yeah, just
trying to come from this expert perspective that Yeah, yeah,
(23:00):
nobody can tell you what your gender is, and this
is actually an example of that. It was hard to
wrap my head around and I still worry about it.
I'm still worrying about my words kind of right now.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Yeah, that was something in the documentary that like you
could see the filmmakers kind of like you can you
can see them kind of going back and forth between
wanting to use people getting top surgery as this kind
of like shock factor thing, but then also like at
(23:33):
the same time being like wait, hold on, like this
is you know, this is something that you can very
very easily like be a right wing transphobe and just
like take a clip of and put on the internet
and be like, hey, like we need to stop gender
clinics from being able to do this. And I don't know.
I think I think you've handled it pretty well, but
(23:56):
I don't know, like this is this is something that
is like I think like one of the important things
is like this cult is ran by SIS people, and
this is you know what. I think it was a
good decision for you to talk about it in terms
of conversion therapy, because that's a lot closer to what's
(24:18):
happening than people transitioning and you know, I mean like
it's I don't know, like I would say. The thing
that's complicated about it, right is you know you it's
you can't talk. It's really really it's almost impossible to
like talk to the people who are going through this
and get an understanding of what their sense of their
gender is. I mean, like I've I watched a couple
(24:40):
of the videos that they made and like, I don't know,
it's it's it's really difficult to like it's it's it's
easy to play arm tre psychologist with it, and I
don't want to do that. And so yeah, I think
I think you've been walking a difficult line. And yeah,
I keep.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
My hands off that too. You know, like I am
not going to tell any one of those folks, you know,
Gabe Ray what's going on in their brains and bodies.
I just do happen to know about the systematic sort
of coaching that they were, you know, exposed to. So,
you know, for in the case of Jesse Hersey, she
(25:22):
had months and months of coaching around letting go of
her entire life, her entire identity starting over, let go
of any image of what you think your twin flame
could be right, And so if you're doing that, you know,
and eventually folks do sort of acquiesque. I think it's
similar in a gender conversion coaching situation. Some people acquiesque,
(25:46):
you know, they get into a high pressure situation, they're
being told who they are, They're being told there will
be consequences if they, you know, go back to their
normal queer self. So so that actually does get somebody
to change, but in a beer based situation. So I
can speak to the coaching, but yes, I'm never going
(26:08):
to be a person telling anyone what their gender is
because we don't know. Hopefully, you know, they can break
free of what I think is you know, pretty manipulative
coercive practices and then they can tell us more about
who they are.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, And I mean I think the other thing I'll
say about that is like, well, I mean, we know,
just on a societal level, that it's possible to force
people to live as a gender that they're not and
to identify themselves as that gender by systematic social pressure.
And we know this because this is the story of
like every transperson who's ever lived, right and totally you know,
and like it sucks, like it really fucking sucks, like
(26:51):
having someone force a gender on you. And I really
hope that these people, like I hope these people find
fin and who they are and you know, whatever form
that takes, that they're not being coerced into it, because like, yeah,
and this is something I think that was in I
(27:11):
think it was in the Netflix documentary that people were
talking about. This is like, you know, in terms of
people who could understand what this is like, Like I
think other trans people are probably some of the only
people in the world who actually do, like even sort
of understand what it's like to be forced to be
a gender if that you're not. And so yeah, I'm
(27:32):
hoping that this develops in a way like of solidarity
and not of weaponization by right wingers.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
But I mean, I think you guys have done all
you could reasonably do to avoid that, like the culture
war is going to do what the culture war does.
I wanted to get into Keith Ranieri a little bit
and kind of how what went on with the Nexium cult,
because he's a friend of the pod over here a
(28:00):
lot about the details of what he got up to.
He's obviously probably the biggest recent cult in the US.
And like us popular culture at least, you know, there's
a couple other little bit of other competition for that title,
but not a ton. And yeah, I wanted to talk
to you a little bit about how some of how
(28:20):
people's awareness of that, because like, obviously, given the media environment,
all the people getting pulled in by the Twin Flames
cult were aware to some extent of cult dynamics and
probably of this story of this cult that is not unrelated.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Definitely. Yeah, So there is a bit of stories colliding.
When you write about cults, there's only so many of them.
Inevitably stories start to cross over. So I was still, yeah,
covering Vnexium trial and you know, folloout sentencings when this
story came across my desk, you know, and even the
(28:58):
first person who talked to me about it, it was like,
I think it's similar, you know, I think their practices
are similar. And sure enough, I go and look at
this mind alignment process and you're right, it's it's kind
of similar to auditing, and scientology is kind of similar
to you know, what Nexium was doing.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So it's.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, the tools of manipulation are common across many of
these groups, and I would say, you know, not just
ex members of Twin Flames, but even potentially the leaders
of Twin Flames have studied other groups, including Nexium. There
is the detail in the documentary that Jeff actually made
(29:39):
folks in the group write an essay about why Keith R.
Nieri was a cult leader but why he was not one,
based on watching the vow in seduced. So that's just, yeah,
a world's colliding for me. But yeah, I think Nexium
has in some ways brought a certain understanding. So of
(30:00):
the sources I was talking to, yeah, had an understanding
of how that worked. And you know what made that wrong,
what made that coercion. Twin Flames doesn't have as many
of the aspects as nexiums. So they don't have a
blackmail program, right, there's no branding in Twin Flames universe.
(30:21):
And you know their diet plan was actually you know,
load up on calories. Right, So there's some various differences
that you know, maybe Jeff studied and thought he could
fly under the radar with that. I don't know. I
don't know Jeff's motivations. He has only sent me long,
rambling emails. He has never agreed to an interview. But yes,
(30:47):
there's so much commonality, including the lawsuits that came out
of this. So when I reported on this in twenty twenty,
immediately after our first story, twin Flames Universe sent a
bunch of threatening letters to all of who they suspected
(31:07):
was cooperating with my reporting. So this was a group
of some thirty five people. I definitely didn't interview all
of them, but they were suspected collaborators. And it basically said,
if you do not retract your story within twenty four
hours and write a public apology, we are going to
publish very damning information about you, and we might pursue
(31:32):
a lawsuit. And this letter was not signed by a lawyer,
you know.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So signed legit.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, in reporting on it, which we did, and of
course nobody retracted, but sure enough, a couple months after that,
they did file a defamation suit against I want to say,
seven or eight members and one mom, And of course
(32:00):
that got thrown out. But that's the next you and
playbook is sue sue folks until they don't speak to
anyone anymore. Right, So it's a silencing tactic and it worked.
It really shook people up. I definitely wanted to give
people space after that. Yeah, it was definitely deja vus.
(32:20):
I guess to see that many lawsuits because there were
two separate ones both thrown out.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, I mean, and that's like something I've had to
like coach some some younger journalists and stuff through too,
because it's a favorite tactic of a lot of terrible people,
like send out legal threats and like, this is not
legal advice. You should always consult a lawyer. But the
vast majority of threats like that that are sent out
cannot be backed up to any realistic extent. Again, don't
(32:49):
ever assume that always consult a lawyer about this sort
of thing. But like the fact that somebody sends you
a we're going to sue you or like a cease
and assist does not mean they can actually hurt you, right,
It just means like for a lot of people, that's
like a go to sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, but it does evoke emotions.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
In the Netflix, stuy, and it does mean you've got
to reach out to a lawyer, which is scary, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yes, yes, thankfully we had vice lawyers that on that one,
but I don't know. In the Netflix documentary, Jeff actually
names me, you know, and tries to intimidate me by name.
And that was actually cut from a much longer video,
And I have to say, when it first came out
(33:36):
it did make me want a cuke. Now when I
see it in the series, it makes me laugh. But
it Yeah, you can really intimidate someone with that stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Sure, I think we should probably end on kind of
talking about where things are now, because again, if you've
watched the documentary, I think the thing that was brought
up to me by a couple of people I know
who watched it was like, so, wait, they're so just
out there doing it.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Used to when stuff like this gets covered, they're being
some sort of satisfying narrative arc. They've been charged, they're
in you know, prison, they're on the run. But this like,
they're just continuing to do cult stuff. And I think
part of like one of the things that is unfortunate.
It's just I'm not a law expert. Again, but just
from what I'm looked at, it's not clear to me
(34:21):
that they've broken a law in a way that's going
to be easy to come after them for.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yeah, So this is the interesting thing about Twin Flames
universe is. It does sort of straddle this line between
you know, it's not nexium. They weren't clear up, they.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Haven't abducted people, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
They haven't risen to that level. Although there are folks
who are in this group who believe they were trafficked,
which is an interesting perspective because they weren't able to
choose the person that they were having sexual contact with,
that they didn't even get to control when or how
that sexual will contact happened. It would take I think,
(35:04):
you know, a very ambitious prosecutor to take on that
kind of case. But back in twenty twenty, some of
these moms were already calling you know, the FBI and
the local Farmington Hills police. Farmington Hills has been like,
this is not our jurisdiction. If anything like, go to
the FBI. We haven't heard any particular updates from that,
(35:27):
you know case. Certainly, folks have said things to me
that sound a bit like fraud. You know, wire fraud
is a very broad concept. I don't know if that's
actually the case. I am not a lawyer, I'm not
a prosecutor, but definitely I think the filmmakers behind the
Netflix documentary in particular, think that this is up to
(35:50):
the FBI. They should be taking action, and they want
their documentary to spur that action. So yeah, we'll see
what happens. I you know, am as I said, not
an expert, not a lawyer, but certainly a lot of
the things that I've heard about sound very concerning and
very similar.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, I mean, and I yeah, it's tough because, like
I mean, I do. I will say I would be
shocked if there's not an active FBI investigation purely based
on how how popular the documentaries have been. Right, Like
that doesn't mean anything will actually happen, but at this
point I would be shocked if they were not seriously
(36:33):
looking into it, just because it's like they're probably getting
hassled by a bunch of people.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yes, and I mean it is a very culty thing
that they also collect everything, you know, video of everything
they've done.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
There's a lot to look into.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
The Yes, the hard drive that one of the folks
in the documentary named Keeley collected was literally called the
Holy Grail. Right nextium for Keith Ranieri, his you know,
damning evidence was called Studies. So I feel like this
is the studies hard drive yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
In that case, Well, we'll continue to all look into
this and excited to kind of see hopefully eventually some
sort of justice being done, although that's always a lot
to ask for out of the world. Yeah, well, Mia,
did you have anything else you wanted to get into.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I think that's basically everything.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Okay, And Sarah, did you have anything else you wanted
to make sure to mention?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Well, I would just like to mention that, you know,
having a belief about something like a soulmate is not
necessarily a bad thing. I don't want people to feel
stupid for having weird beliefs. If you open your third
eye and you know, believe your partner has been you know,
in your dreams, since, that's fine to me. I don't
(38:02):
want to disparage that kind of person. It's the systematic
coersion that you know, I'm particularly concerned about in my reporting. Yeah,
but yeah, maybe you could check out my book it's
called Don't Call It a Cult. Yeah, about the Nexium case.
You can follow me on Twitter Sarah Burns b E
r MS not X I'm dead naming Twitter again. Yeah, Yeah,
(38:30):
that's about it.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
All right. Well, everyone, that's been Another episode of it
could happen here Until next time, Why don't you go
happen somewhere else?
Speaker 2 (38:45):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly,
coolzonemedia dot com, slash sources.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Thanks for listening.
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