September 10, 2025 • 61 mins
Journalist Jane Borden joins the girls to discuss her book Cults Like Us, a gripping investigation into how cultic thinking is woven into the fabric of American life. Jane delves into the radical roots of early Protestant settlers, how the deep-rooted American mythology of a strong rebel cowboy who can save us from the bad guys makes us more susceptible to demagogues and authoritarians, and why pronatalism is just another form of doomsdayism.
They talk about how fear of the end of the world, fear of not being good enough, and fear of “the other” influence us. They discuss everything from the bootstraps myth to mass marketing to self-help empires, and how the promise of salvation has shaped the American psyche more than we like to admit.
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Jane Borden
Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Trust me? Do you trust me?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
Everly?
Speaker 1 (00:05):
And you astrid to us? This is the truth, the
only truth.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't
welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme belief
and manipulation from two former cult members who've actually experienced it.
I am Lo Lablanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth. And today
our guest is Jane Borden, author of Cults Like Us
Why Doomsday Thinking drives America. Today, Jame's going to talk
(00:31):
to us about why the Puritans were actually a high
control group, how the ethos that working was a sign
of righteousness informs our current American belief that having a
lot of money is a sign of goodness, and how
pro natalism and the idea that the correct people should
be having more babies is not only incredibly dangerous but
also another form of doomsdayism.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We'll talk about the American monometh and why it makes
us interested in authoritarian style leadership, How the Book of
Revelation is not quite what we think it is, how
all this black and white thinking is just a way
to make sense of the chaos, and how self help
and marketing are their own forms of cultic thinking.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Before we get to our guest, Megan, what is the
cultiest thing of the week for you?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
My cultiest thing of the week is just learning more
about Lauri Bellow. Do you remember her? Yes, of the
Chad day Bell case. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
She's a woman who is accused of murdering her two
children with her husband, Chad day Bell, who they're also
accused of killing a whole slew of other people. He
wrote like doomsday almost romance novels in my opinion, that
she got super obsessed with. And who knows if he
believed it, but I do think she believed that they
(01:40):
were coming true, kind of bringing in this new heralding
in this kind of revelation into being. They ended up
killing their two children. They found the bodies anyway, Chad
day Bell has been sentenced to the death penalty.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, And I read that Laurie is defending herself and court.
No she's not, Yes, she is. Wow. She is very good.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I mean, don't get me wrong, She's going to be
found guilty, but she's very good at like flirting.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Are you watching the trial?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
No, but I watched the documentary and like she gets
pulled over and and she's just like, oh my gosh,
my lipstick.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I can't find it. Oh my god, where is it?
And and like you let her go. She's very flirtatious and.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
She's very out of things. So uh yeah, that's mine.
What a fascinating person. Whenever somebody decides to represent themselves
in court, I automatically assume that they are mentally very
mentally unwell, because why would you do that unless you're
like the sickest lawyer of all time, And even then
you would know you want a team like she.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
And she's not a lawyer, and she's like, I've been
reading books. Good for you, Lorie.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
You will end up in jail and you should and
you should and you should.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
This is the part where we go to your cultiest
thing of the week, because we both do one. What's
your cultiest thing of the week.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
My cultiest thing of the week is something I actually
I'm gonna say I don't think is a cult, but
there are there are just like elements of group gatherings that.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
That can feel cult eat to be. Okay, So I started.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Going to alan on And for those of you who
don't know what allan on is, because I've learned in
the past few weeks that everybody thinks that allan On.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Is just AA which it's not.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
AA is for people who are alcoholics or addicts. Alan
On is for people who have been affected by people
who are alcoholics or addicts. So it's you know, your
mom's an alcoholic, if your loved one is an addict.
That's the program that you go to. And it's also
a twelve step program. It's just a slightly different program.
(03:49):
There's a lot of like, you know, people like me
who have who are extremely Type A and want to
fix everything and make everything better, which is, yeah, are
you going.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
To alan On because you're host is an alcoholic? Oh
my god, I can't believe it took me this long.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I'm in the program too, guys. It's fine. The AA
one Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
My brother is an addict, and people who you know,
have listened to some of our old episodes will know
that that's been an ongoing thing. He did overdose and
he has a brain injury now. But I actually went
because of a breakup that happened and just kind of
some realizations I'd had about some of my own patterns.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
And.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
It's my first twelve step program.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
I mean I've gone to like a couple to support people,
you know, but it's the first one I'm going to
for myself, so I'm getting the most like clear window
into how it works.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Like what I love about it and what I think
prevents it from a being a cult is that there's
no central leadership. Responsibilities change hands all the time, so
there really isn't room for someone to be like this
is the way to do it, or at least there's
there are safeguards against that, yep. But of course some
of the other things that will happen in any kind
of support group were recurring gathering I think are like
(05:02):
the language. There's like language that everybody uses. There's like
catchphrases and slogans, and I'm like, I don't why are
you all saying the same thing?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I don't. Yeah, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You know your secret language, Yeah you have, there is
a secret language. And obviously this is not what everybody does.
But like some people will get up and talk and
I'll notice they're applying the alan On principles to everything
in their life as opposed to just the things that
applies to which also you know, as we know, like
when you think one thing is the answer to all
(05:34):
things in your life, that can be maybe making it
too important totally.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But like it's great.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, it's great, and I think it's really helpful. And
if anyone actually does have an addict in their life
like me, I recommend going, even though I'm so uncomfortable
when I'm there because I'm like this, I'd be vulnerable
in front of people and not like in the podcast
way where I'm like just talk, but like I have to, like, actually,
you know, it's different, and if anybody has an addict
and their brain like me, go take care of it.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
The only thing I don't like is when they refer
to it as a family. Ooh yeah, yeah, I was like, no,
we're not. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Sometimes the higher power talk bothers me, but as an atheist,
but I have been to meetings where they're very good
about not overusing like God language and more just saying
higher power.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
But yeah, it's what an interesting new thing in my life.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Absolutely shocking. Honestly, I'm very proud of you, but it
can thank you. Yeah, but sometimes we need that. I
had no idea that the Puritans were one of the
most impactful cults in American history, and they just came
in hot from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
And to provide some context for this episode, because we
were a little hazy on some of this history, and
maybe some of y'all are too, here's just a little
little overview to set us up.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
The Puritans left England because they wanted to create their own, improved,
more extreme, purified version of the Church of England, which
they thought hadn't gone far enough in its reforms after
breaking away from the Catholic Church. They didn't know that, yeah, same,
the Church of England was trying to establish itself as
like a mandatory religion, and the Puritans believed that they
(07:16):
should be able to do the religion however they wanted
without like a leader or a state head or whatever
telling them how to do it and running the show.
But they didn't actually want religious pluralism. They just wanted
to create a society where they could do religion their
way and make everyone else also do it that way,
which is the same thing, ironically. And then they settled
in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in sixteen thirty and within
(07:39):
ten years they were the colony's majority group. So it
informed so much of what America became after that.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, and they didn't even expect to be there for
ten years. They thought the apocalypse was high noon arriving.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Which is what Jane Morden is going to tell us
all about. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Welcome Jane Borden to trust me. Thank you so much
for joining us, Thank you for having me. I'm excited
to be here. You're here with us today because you
wrote a book called Cults Like Us Why Doomsday Thinking
Drives America? Which seems somewhat relevant right now to our culture.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
What inspired you to write this book? First of all
to answer those questions? What's going on? How did we
get here? Why is this happening?
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I had become very preoccupied with the division in the
nation after Trump's first election. How can people who are
really mostly the same be so divided or see themselves
as so divided? Where's that coming from? And so I
had all that rolling around in my brain while I
was also doing some cult.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Reporting for Vanity Fair.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
And I was a religious studies major in college, and
I've sort of always been interested in belief, and so
in this sort of muck of things rolling around in
my brain, it dawned on me one day that the
Puritans were kind of a could I mean, if people
today look back at them, we would call them a cold.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Can you tell us why that is?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Because I really my knowledge of Puritans is like from
some third grade class where what picture book like maybe
had a turkey or something like you.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Were like, yeah, tracing your hand, and that's the extent
of it. I was reading this like it was a
fairy tale, like had I had no idea any of
it was real.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Well, we don't learn those parts because they're a little
inconvenient or unflattering at least, Right, But the Puritans, first
of all, they were a doomsday group, so they believe
the end was very near, and they hoped they were
among the chosen. And they were fleeing England because they
thought that armageddon was coming to England. They thought God
(09:57):
was first going to punish England before.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
The rest of the world.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah, And they thought England's crime was that it had
not purified the Church of England enough, it had not
made it distinct enough from the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Right, I did not realize that they were just more
extreme than the Church that they were fleeing. Like in
my head, I was like, Oh, they just wanted to
practice religious freedom. But it sounds like they were like,
you guys, aren't letting us be extreme enough and you
aren't like going hard enough in your religion.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, and they were derided.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
I mean they were called hot Protestants, which I love ye,
and you know they got executed.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
They were spit on.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
They were not popular, these people, and you can kind
of understand why.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I mean, you know, they didn't dance.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
There was no you weren't even allowed to like love
your kids or your spouse very much, because if you
loved anything more than.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
God, that was bad.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
They were kind of boring to a degree, like if
they were at a dinner party, you'd be like leave, right.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Do you must we sit on people for being boring?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Well, I mean, I don't know if this is the
quite the right moment for it, but that leads to
a big persecution complex, right exactly. Everyone hates me, everyone
hates us. We're gonna but guess what, God loves us. Yeah,
and you're gonna pay, and you're gonna pay. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So can you tell us a little bit about how
the Puritans were in fact a high control group when
they got here and how that kind of evolved.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Yeah, so you know, high control group means belief was controlled,
behavior was controlled, information intake controlled. They did this by
pushing conformity. It was a culture of punishment, so everything
you could be punished for. I mean it was kind
of I don't know how they lived their lives in
constant fears how they live their lives, which is motivating,
(11:48):
you know, to conform. But for example, swearing was illegal, flirting, gossiping,
You couldn't disagree with the minister. A woman got turned
in by her survey because the servant overheard her expressing
a disagreement with the minister. It was illegal to skip church.
The servant people were turned into informants, and so you
(12:10):
were walking on eggshells all the time. They made it
very difficult to get into the church. So there was
this thing that you desperately wanted that was always just
out of reach. And so the idea was that no
one knows who is or isn't going to be saved
on Doomsday because only God knows that and also He's
(12:31):
chosen it, you know, before you were born. But they
were still like, we're pretty sure we know, and we're
pretty sure we are sure. And so the way they
determined that or proved it was just by looking within,
you know, just kind of sit with yourself and look
for signs of grace, and if you feel like you
find it, then you're probably among the chosen, and therefore
(12:52):
you can gain jury into the church. But the longer
the Puritan settlement was around in Boston, the harder they
made entry into the church to get This was very
much because the magistrates wanted to hold onto power. They
were corrupted by power, and the more people who could
get into the church, the less power they had. And
so they started telling people, you know, are you sure,
(13:15):
are you sure you found grace? Maybe you should go
look again. There's probably wickedness in there somewhere. And so
church numbers shrank, and this all led to a variety
of crises because they were a theocracy, and how do
you govern at any rate? And so there's all these
stories about in the second and third generations about people
who get power holding on to it and not letting go.
(13:35):
And sometimes they would change the rules rather than seed power,
which is something we always see in high control groups
and cults.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So really what we're talking about is power.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Always well What are the origins of this sort of
doomsday thinking or has this just always been around like
in every religion or is this a uniquely American thing.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I think it's especially American, but it's certainly not unique.
Apocalyptic thinking in general, which just means thinking that the
world is going to end, that instead of everything being
a circle, it's a line with a destination. That is
a relatively new development. It pretty much came about with Monotheism,
with the development of Monotheism, so it started with the Zoroastrians,
(14:31):
and from there it very much influenced Judaism and from there,
you know, the Christianity, the Jesus Cult, as some called it,
was an apocalyptic group. Christianity is an apocalyptic religion in
many ways, and we've moved away from that modern Christianity has,
but it's there at the roots. And then it flared
(14:51):
hugely around following the Reformation, and the Puritans brought it
to America. Can you say a little bit about Roger Williams. Yeah,
so he was a radical among the radicals. He showed
up shortly after the Puritans setup shop in Boston and
began criticizing the Church magistrates. He thought that the Church
(15:14):
in Boston had not gone far enough to purify itself
of the evils of the Satanic pope.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
He basically thought we should be worshiping the way Jesus
and his apostles did. So no structure, no church. He
would only pray with his wife. In later years he
only prayed alone, and so he wanted He kind of
wanted to burn it all down, and the church was
not happy about this. They tried to kick him out.
He caught wind of it, fled south and essentially found
(15:47):
at Rhode Island. And what's fascinating to me about him
is that he's become the grandfather of the separation of
church and state. Like the Establishment Clause the First Amendment
came from his ideas. But ultimately he was just trying
to bring Jesus back.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
He just wanted more church.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
He thought, Jesus isn't going to come back unless you
get rid of church structure. And I want Jesus to
come back. Everybody wants the world to end, so everybody
wants they want they want to see it, and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
They want to see everybody go to hell more than
they even want to go to Heaven. They want to
see their enemies go to hell punished. That's right, it's
freaking weird.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I write about this poem, The Day of Doom, which
was is considered America's first bestseller. It's hugely popular in
Puritan New England, and it's the story of doomsday. It's
a long form poem and I think two hundred and
twenty some standas are dedicated to people getting it right,
like wailing and begging for mercy and being denied and
thrown into the lake.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Affair, gnashing of teeth and gnashing of teath duck in
my brain.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
But before any of that happens, the saints, the elect,
the chosen are pulled up to heaven so they can
help and watch.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, that's their first reward. My goodness, loved ones and
they're friends God. Yeah, anything to feel special. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You wrote about how there are values of like hard
work and how this was virtuous to be like kind
of constantly working because that meant you were righteous somehow
because you weren't distracted. How did that like stick in
American culture and how does it relate to kind of
what we see today in evangelical.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Culture why we worship billionaires.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah, this one's interesting because the Puritans were very clear
on the boat on the way over, you know, they said,
you will give to your neighbor if your neighbor needs it,
even if you think you're not going to get that
money back.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That's just how we roll. Get on board or go
back to England, you know.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
But over time this shifted because of their idea that
the way you worshiped God was by having a calling
by working. They thought that God only created us because
he wanted to be worshiped, and that the way we
did it was by working hard. So the harder you worked,
the more you loved God. So what that meant is
that if you're working really hard, you're going to start
(18:06):
accruing wealth.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
It's inevitable.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
And so is wealth then really bad or is it
just a sign of how much you love God and
a sign that maybe He loves you in turn if
he's rewarding you, right, yes, So then eventually, over time
it became okay to acquire money. Acquisitiveness stopped being this
evil sin and started being something good and righteous.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, because also if you have grace, then you would
get wealth. So it's this kind of circular thinking that
begins too.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And therefore, if you have wealth, you must have grace. Yes,
and so John Rockefeller famously said that he got his
money from God.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
But of course, the people who believe this are generally
people who are buying into an unscientific shall we say, reality,
because we know that having wealth is what enables you
to create more wealth, the bootstraps. Can you talk a
little bit about the bootstraps myth of America?
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, it is a myth.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
I believe that people who follow this doctrine that the
wealthy are that the number in your bank account represent
your moral character, right, because the inverse of the wealthy
being among the chosen is that the impoverished are sinners.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah. Right.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
The idea is, if you're poor, well, surely that God
wants you to be poor. You know, God assessed you
and decided you weren't worthy, and so why should we
help the poor?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Sin should be punished?
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Right, And so we see this this bootstrapping ethic preached
to the poor, when in fact there are constraints set
in place that keep them from ever becoming rich. Because
when you have money, you don't want to give it away,
and so this doctrine becomes a very handy justification to
not just hold your wealth, but as I argue in
(19:56):
the book, actually mine the lower classes of their wealth,
because again, if you see them as sinners, you see
them as just another part of the natural world, which,
according to the Puritan ethos, we're supposed to be mining
and extracting from and using for our own benefit.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Oh god, it's baked in there, it's really it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Really it reminds me of the law of attraction that like,
you just aren't thinking, you're not doing it right if
you're not attracting enough like wealth and success into your life.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
What I took away from this in a bigger way
was like luck is so scary for Americans to wrap
their head around.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And probably you know, many cultures.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Like randomness, the randomness, the fear of the unknown, so
that everything must have a reason and a reward or
a punishment.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yes, the world is just.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
It's the just world hypothesis, right, which is that cognitive
bias where we are prone to believing that things are
the way they are because they're supposed to be that
way and because the world is just. So if somebody
is really wealthy, they must be wealthy because they did
good things and they are correct and righteous and if
they're poor, it must be their fault.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
That makes things easier to accept than the chaos. Yeah,
the chaos. We talk about the chaos a lot. It
is really difficult to accept the chaos. Yeah, and that's
what feels coolt like thinking, right, trying to create order
out of chaos.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
So I want to hear a bit about the American
mono myth. Where does that come from and.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
So in the nineteen seventies, a couple of scholars named
John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett started chatting about the
Vietnam War and how it was possible that Americans could
be stomaching so much violence right, And over time and
over time they realized they started to see this pattern
in pop culture and they eventually named it the American
(21:58):
mono myth. And it's it's a troupe that you see
in film and comic books, westerns, and the basic storyline
is that there's a small Edenic like community that's under
threat and the government and the police force are ill equipped.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
They can't stop it. What's everyone going to do? Oh?
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Wow, here comes this hero, this outsider who literally appears
out of nowhere. Or they're within the community, but they're
like a loner in the community, right, and they kill
all the bad guys essentially with scalpel precision, and then
they disappear from whence they came. And so the solution
is always violence, and like I said, it's precise, so
(22:47):
there are never innocent casualties, only the bad guys die.
Therefore it's like a cleansing violence, it's a righteous violence.
And Jewet and Lawrence trace this to something called Indian
captivity narratives, which came out of the Puritan era, and
these were true life stories written by people who had
(23:09):
been captured and then rescued from you know, native communities,
and it was always a violent rescue and then the
wilderness was cleansed and then became safe again for the
white settlers afterward.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Was the idea.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
And so this genre really exploded in the twenties and
thirties with the development of westerns and superhero comics.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
But it's in everything.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
I mean, there were three movies out last month that
follow this trope, which ones The Accountant.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Okay, haven't I mean, I probably haven't seen any of them,
but go on.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
What's the one with romy Malik where he goes out
on a vigilante killing spray for everyone who killed his wife.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Oh, I don't know, I for guessing. Yeah, he I'm
real behind on movies. You know, they're vigilanting like Death Wish.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, is an American model, with Star Wars even Jaws.
I mean, you really start to see it everywhere if
you're looking. But so where I really see the origin
of this, You know, if you want to go back
farther than the Indian captivity nerves is in the Book
of Revelation.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Please tell us about this. Yes, is so fascinating. What
is the Book of Revelation and how did we get
it wrong?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Oh? My gosh.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
So the Book of Revelation was written around ninety CE,
and it's a work of anti Roman propaganda. It was
written by one of Jesus, an early follower, this guy
John of Patmos is what he's called, and he was
a Jew, right, and it was written in response to
(24:47):
the Roman occupation. So I believe it was sixty six
Rome just destroyed Jerusalem. The Jews had tried to fight
back and it was horrific, and so their thinking was okay,
but Jesus is coming back any day now, he said,
he was going to be back in our light in
a generation, in our lifetime. It had been sixty years
(25:10):
and he still hadn't come back. And so basically, this
guy John of Patmos delivered the rescue narrative that the
community needed. Interesting and so it's a story of divine
retribution and it's very much coded. Scholars can tell that
it's written about Rome. So the various headed beasts, you know,
(25:31):
one heads for each of the Roman emperors. The six
six six is a reference to Nero. People think that
the mark of the beast referenced Roman coins because a
lot of Jews at the time didn't want to carry
around Roman money because you know their God, Ask God
on the money.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Ask God on the money exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
So in the Story of Revelation, there is again this
outsider who kind of shows up out of nowhere to
kick off the retribution, and it's Jesus in this case.
He appears as a slaughtered lamb, as the innocent slaughtered
lamb whose hand is sort of pushed, as the one
who's chosen to begin opening all these scrolls, which rains
(26:14):
terror on the earth. Incredibly violent, ecstatically violent. The Book
of Revelation at one point an angel collects all of
the wicked on the earth.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
This is the grapes of wrath. Reference.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
He collects all the grapes of the earth, which is
the wicked, and puts them in a giant wine press
and smushes them and so much blood comes out that,
oh my god, that it creates a river as high
as a horse's bridle that flows for two hundred miles.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Okay, it's really creative, though. You have to hand it too.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
And I know, and I just want to state for
the record, growing up and the cult that I did,
we read this as completely literal. I would get tucked
into my little bed every night and think about revelations
and just be like, I'm scared. And whenever we would
leave to go anywhere by two parents would go. Is
(27:09):
that what you want to be wearing when Jesus comes
back to the earth. Is this where you want to
be going when Jesus.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Comes back to the earth, Because you are, you'll be
squished like you'll.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Like a grape. I just wanted to go to the
mall and I'd be like, God, get zooks or heaven, I.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Don't know, Oh my god, I love get zukes over.
I like forgot about it for the last twenty years.
You mentioned how like this is just like a completely
different Jesus from the Old Testament or from the previous Jesus, that.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
It's like an actual genus.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, if you were writing this character in a screenplay,
you'd be like, why does he suddenly completely change everything
about his motivation and his behavior? And I would be like,
this character doesn't make any sense, please rewrite it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah, it's like miss understood who wrote this chapter? Right?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yeah, So the reason Revelation got canonized is in part
because people thought John was like John the Apostle, the
guy who wrote the Gospel of John, although that's also
up for debate, but that John they thought was that John.
So they thought, well, anything this guy wrote needs to
be in the Bible. But in fact it was written
by another John, which was a bit of an oopsie
(28:24):
but so wild. Yeah, and there were you know, there
were some people at the time who who saw the
distinction and kind of raised their hands, but they didn't
they didn't win the day. And there were also people
at the time when I say at the time, I
mean when the New Testament was canonized, who were like,
this is insane, you know. Yeah, it's it's it feels
(28:47):
a little insane.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
It's interesting how much that influenced so much of the
rest of history and like you know, used as a
justification for so much violence.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
This guy was just journaling.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
He was just family fantasy, little vision board fantasy.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And now my whole childhood was right. Yeah, well it's
all about a number of other things.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean, like the planet was. It's just like forever
fucked because he had a little fantasy.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
We had a vision.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
He was and he was in the spirit, right, which
is what you did back then before you So there
were lots of revelations at the time. His wasn't the
only one. It's just the one that stood the test
of time. But but you would get in the spirit.
So whether that means they were taking mind altering substances
or like spinning around in circles until they got dizzy,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, I'm going to quote you, oh because I wrote
a quote about the American monomoth. Okay, the American monomth
undermines our nations founding ideology democracy. It subconsciously encourages the
public to forego the messy, laborious, and painstaking process of
cooperation and compromise by instead waiting for a superhero and
then granting that figure unlimited and unchecked power. It's a
(30:00):
passive public desiring a totalitarian leader. This is so interesting
to me because I don't feel drawn to these stories.
I don't know if you feel drawn to these stories,
but certainly every man I've ever dated has been drawn
to these stories.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It feels like such a masculine thing.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Do you.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Find that, like there is more of a craving for
that authoritarian style leadership in particular periods, or like right
now in particular, like what makes us crave that, or
at least what makes men crave that?
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Well, indoctrination into it as we all have been in America,
and not least because of these narratives showing up in
every film, especially today, it feels like but also you know,
as you know, cult like thinking increases during times of crisis,
So whether that's people joining cults, like the number of
the proliferation of cults, or whether that's just increases at
(30:57):
the society level in the kind of cult like thinking.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I explore the book, and so.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
We're experiencing a time of extreme crisis right now. Sociologists
point specifically to technological revolution. Social media has completely changed
the way we communicate with one another.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
The algorithms have changed the way we live AI.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Of course, we don't even know yet how that's going
to reshape society.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Global warming doing us no favors.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Global warming being the biggest crisis humanity has yet faced
social upheaval, so me too. The quote unquote woke movement
America is going to be minority majority soon. These are
leading people to freak out. This is leading to a
political backlash, which we've seen. It's also leading to huge
increases in quote like thinking. And the most pressing crisis,
(31:46):
in my opinion, facing Americans right now is income inequality.
Majority of Americans are chronically under resourced. And there's nothing
that causes your world to wobble more again that chaos, right,
and being unresourced. And so we're seeing huge increases in
cult like thinking right now. And I think it's swept
(32:07):
Donald Trump into the White House. Yeah, because we want
an autocrat. We are currently flirting with autocracy.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
To say the least.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yes, Yeah, it's like when we are in survival mode,
all we want is some hope for relief and for
somebody to fix it and make it better. And when
someone comes in with easy answers and black and white
thinking and says I will fix it, I will make
it better, of course we're going to be drawn to that,
and especially in times of great division, where we are
(32:38):
being told by media over and over again, the people
who disagree with us are bad and evil and wrong and.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
We should be against them.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Like, we're just so primed right now for the situation
that we're currently in with leadership that is not interested
in checks on its power at all, which is how
cults operate. The inability to critique, the ability to question,
to dissent in any way like that is authoritarianism, and
that is exactly the same as cults.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
And we saw that happening with the Puritans after the
Antinomian controversy, which was basically just a time when this
woman Ann Hutchinson was like, hey, I disagree with you,
and they were like shut it down.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And Anna Hutchinson sounded so cool. She sounds cool, right, yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
These people were all a little crazy, right right right.
We like them because we feel like they were fighting
the enemy, but we might not want to hang out
with them at dinner hard to say, hard to say, yeah,
but yeah, So they quashed descent. They did away with
the practice of question and answers after sermons because it
was too vexing, which is like what we see happening
(33:46):
right now with Trump shutting down universities. They banished Hutchinson
and a bunch of other people who fled to the
new colony of Rhode Island where all the radicals went.
That was around the time they founded Harvard. And there
were lots of reasons behind Harvard's founding, but one of
them was to indoctrinate youth. I mean, they really brought
(34:07):
down the hammer in response to critique. Fascinating considering Harvard
is the one school that is standing up to Trump
right now. You drew a connection between doomsdaism and this
panic right now about declining birth rates, and I just
would love to hear more about how some of these
ideas are just another form of doomsday thinking.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
So, people who ascribe to pronatalists thinking have a variety
of beliefs, So I don't want to loop everyone under
one umbrella. But some of the people in that movement
believe that if elites in America, specifically stop having kids,
that that's going to be the end of civilization. So
inherent in that already is the assumption that America and
(34:53):
Western civilization is civilization right right, which is the chosen nation,
chosen people thing, which is very puritan.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
And very rooted in white supremacy, yep, the myth of
the Anglo Saxon and all that.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
So the idea behind pronatalism that is shared by the
eugenics movement is that only really certain people should be
having more kids, right, And so we hear some in
the pronatalist movement saying, you know, let's give child tax
(35:28):
credits and you know, money for universal pre K and
that sort of thing. But we also hear people like well,
for example, Elon Musk was quoted by an anonymous friends
as like encouraging all his rich friends to have kids.
So it's it's whose genes do we want right to spread?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:50):
And ultimately I believe this is all just a way
for people with power to replicate their own power. That's
what's happening in the eugenics movement, and I think that's
what's happening now, and that's what cult leaders do. I mean,
Elon Musk has had thirteen kids, I think at this
point that we know of Warren Jeff's had sixty, Malachi
(36:10):
Yorck had three hundred. Jeffrey Epstein had plans to seed
the earth by impregnating up to twenty women at a time. Oh,
my god, until I don't know. And so this is
power replicating itself, and this is people behaving like gods,
trying to literally reshape society in their own image.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah, I'm saying, we have a lot of money, so
we're inherently good. We're virtuous and virtuous and chosen by God,
and so we'll just replicate it. There was an interesting
part of your book about sterilization and how back in
the day people would be like, you, guys shouldn't have kids,
and we choose who should have more and who shouldn't
have any.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
There were mass sterilizations, and this was at the beginning
of the twentieth century. Between sixty and seventy thousand Americans
were sterilized a lot, most out here in California. Yeah,
and the Supreme Court ruling, the Buck v. Bell ruling
that said it was legal to do that is still
in the books. Well, but so the justification for I
(37:13):
get to choose who does and doesn't pro create, and
I'm going to base it on you replicating the power
of rich white people. The justification for that is the
search for perfectionism, the pursuit of perfectionism, which is a
cult like thinking which comes from the Puritans. So the
idea is like, maybe we don't have to wait for
(37:35):
God to deliver New Jerusalem as he does at the
end of the Book of Revelation. Maybe we can reach
New Jerusalem ourselves. If we perfect society, if we perfect
human civilization, then we will create heaven for ourselves. And
that's what we saw happening before and during the eugenics movement.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Real quick, y'all to give some content for the landscape
of pro natalism today and how it relates to eugenics
and racism. At natal con the pro natalist convention in
twenty twenty three, a far right businessman presented on the
importance of men only spaces and said the Civil Rights
Act of nineteen sixty four and its progeny are probably
the single most destructive set of laws in American history,
(38:19):
and all should be wiped forever from the history of
this nation. You can see why this is a problem.
The organizer of natal Khan has promoted people like discredited
race science advocate Charles Murray, who thinks poor women have
low IQs because of their inferiority and therefore should not
have children, and has described love between men and women
as a relationship between superior and inferior. Obviously, there are
(38:43):
a ton of extremely dangerous ideas in this movement. We
will do a full episode on that kind of thinking
very soon to dive deeper into some of those beliefs.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
It reminds me of the Human Potential movement, which is
kind of this very American idea that we all have
within us, this almost Jesus like potential to be perfect.
It's been going on for forever. Think and grow rich.
All of these books are like, you're thinking is the
root of the problems, and Heaven is here in your brain.
(39:12):
There's a part of Christ in you that's totally pure,
and just fix your brain and you'll get there. And
if you don't get better, then you haven't fixed your brain, right,
And so you should keep paying for my course courses. Yeah, Yeah,
I'm really susceptible to self help and.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
We all are.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
Yeah, And there's nothing wrong with self help. The problem
is that we get exploited by people who are trying
to take our money. Yes, and they do it via
our latent indoctrination.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, and just the never ending pursuit of more and
better and heaven and perfect Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
And the study suggests that the more we engage in
self reflection, constantly looking inward and trying to improve ourselves,
it makes us sick. It doesn't make us happier, it
doesn't make us better. I was so this was so
interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
You mentioned Rena Raphael's book I love her how she
describes the modern spiritual consumer as creating individualized, bespoke practices
and belief systems by basically picking and choosing, you know, spirituality.
But then you talked about this twenty eighteen study. I
thought this study was so interesting. So I'm just going
(40:23):
to read an excerpt of your writing from your book
for our listeners. A twenty eighteen study identified among its
participants two basic strategies for seeking happiness, one social and
one individual. The study determined that people with the goals
of seeing friends and family more, joining a nonprofit, or
helping people in need reported increased life satisfaction a year later.
(40:44):
Those who focused on goals such as staying healthy, finding
a better job, or quitting smoking reported no increase in
life satisfaction. In fact, the self focused road to happiness
was even less effective than having no plans for action
at all. That is so interesting, period, Exactly Why is
it just because we're like looping on like almost this
(41:05):
obsessive like am I happy yet?
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Am I happy yet? Am I happy yet?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Like? I think so, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
that's part of it. I think the other part of
is that actual sources of happiness come from community, come
from mutual aid.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Which is also what cults give people, which is the problem.
You know, that's so tricky. It's so tricky.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I think it's like it's such a delicate little framework.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah yeah, but community is what ultimately seems to raise
people's lived experience.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yeah, And it just like hammers home for me that
the self help which you wrote about, the self help
culture is sort of a never ending like it's a
bottomless the goal will never really be achieved because it
does become this endless cycle of we need to purchase
more courses, more books, more seminars, And that's by design, right,
(41:55):
Like if the answer was actually achievable. They would stop
making money, it right, it would cease to be a customer.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Yeah, they're just creating more courses for you. So I
went to the Tony Robbins conference where we walked across
hot coals chanting like I think it was like.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
I believe in me or something.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Anyway, then afterwards you're like, oh my god, yay, I've
overcome this huge fear. And then he's like, and here's
a bundle for the next part. And I remember being
really young and being like, well, this is fucking crazy.
A bundle, A bundle like a wellness bundle, like classes and.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
More for you to buy, more for you to buy.
You thought you'd reach the dusky. I thought i'd reach Nirvana.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I was a firewalker, right, and no, there was lots
more to do, and it was very sad and I
didn't do it, but a lot of people did. And
I can see why. If I had the money, I
probably would have. But yeah, kind of creating this breaking
down is what he did. Sorry, Tony, if you're listening
to this, just these groups kind of break you down
(43:01):
in the beginning part and I'm like, you're nothing, and
then build you back up and then you're kind of hooked.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
And that's what colts do, the exactly down and rebuild
you in their own image.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Well, and as you pointed out in the book, that's
also what advertising and marketing do. And can you talk
a little about Edward Burne's Yeah, the Father of spin
he which is a great book I relied on quite
a bit. He considered himself to have invented more or
less public relations.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
That's not exactly true, but being a spin master, he
wrote his own narrative. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud,
and so he began his career baby but okay, yeah,
a little bit. He began his career working in you
know what would later be known as pr and he
(43:54):
went to visit his uncle and came back to New
York just full of beans about this idea of what
if I take my uncle's ideas about the subconscious and
desire and apply it to advertising?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
What a perfect storm?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Yeah, yeah, and became incredibly successful, revolutionized the industry and
changed the way we purchase. So before then, before Burnese
bb basically advertising was needs based, like, hey, we have
this product, you might need it.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Do you need it? It's pretty cool if you do.
Speaker 4 (44:32):
And that's oversimplifying things a little bit, but after Burne's
it's this advertisement is going to create in you a
need that did not previously exist, and we're going to
do that by tickling your latent desires and your latent indoctrination,
and then you're going to see this as the cure
for what ails you.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
It's so smart, it's so brilliant, it's so Friday, and
he was able to like incorporate symbolism and just cut
straight to your unconscious ping. I mean, it's like a
mini little cull if like break creating a need and
then filling it Like it's genius if what you want
to do is make a lot of money. Yes, But
then didn't political figures in America sort of take notice
(45:15):
and become interested.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
So, at the time, America was overproducing and there was
a glut. There was too much stuff headed into the marketplace,
and so the problem was do we scale back these
engines of production, which could be bad for the economy,
or do we find another way? And so they heard
about what Brenees was doing and were like, hey, can
(45:38):
you find a way to convince people to buy all
these things that they don't need and sure can, sure can.
And that's really when the American economy became addicted to
the consumer marketplace as a driver.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
What a lovely thing that happened.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's been really good for all of us.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Yeah. Bernez was a fascinating character, and you can tell
that he maybe did question a little bit of his
motives because he would espouse ideas publicly that we're a
little counter to what he believed. But he certainly didn't
have a lot of compunction about doing what he did.
And a reporter during the Nazi regime found a copy
(46:24):
of Burne's book in Grobbel's office on his shelves.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
I mean, it makes sense because you do have to manipulate.
You have to exploit people's inner desires in order to
convince them that you of anything, but especially you really
need to convince them that an entire group of people
is so horrible that they all deserve to die. I mean,
like the different forms that manipulation takes, and how much
(46:51):
we are all manipulatable, and how much that is exploited
by people in power, It just never ceases to amaze me.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
It is also connected.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, and it's easy to feel super hopeless about all
of it.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
Yeah, And that was a concern for me when I
started researching and writing the book, But I ultimately found
a lot of hope because when we see the magic trick,
we stopped falling for it. And I think when we
don't recognize that these beliefs are driving us, then we're
going to be exploited again and again. But when we
(47:27):
can see, oh, this is not the way life is
or the way I think. This is one driving idea
among many, and I can take it or leave it,
then we're less likely to be exploited. And so I
think when we can recognize and then acknowledge and articulate
(47:47):
the ways Puritan doomsday ideology is still driving America, the
less likely we are to fall prey to it.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Can you give us an example of that?
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Can you take that from like the unconscious to the
conscious so to speak? And tell I'm curious of what
it would look like in myself of like I have
a thought and then I undo it?
Speaker 1 (48:08):
How correct question? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Well, I think you know, I think you experienced it
at the end of that Tony Robbins thing, right, you know, Oh,
this is the end I reached Nirvana.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Oh no, wait, you're telling me there's more.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
You know, you very easily could have said, oh yeah, no,
I'm not there yet, right right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
For me, it's like I think, especially just given social
media and we know how quickly oversimplified information spreads because
it's just easier to process in our brains.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
But like, if we can get better at.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Noticing the underlying narrative, Like, is a group of people
being demonized?
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Here? Am I being encouraged to think in black and white? Here?
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Am I being told that there's one group that is
the reason for all of my problems? My like big
guest hope with this podcast is to like foster that
kind of thinking in people, just literally pausing and being like,
what am I being told to believe about others? Am
I being sold an easy solution that maybe is oversimplified,
(49:16):
Like you know, Daniel Kahman talks about just like literally
pausing to examine our biases instead of just being on
autopilot alone can do so much work for us.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Right yeah, yeah, No, I mean it's the pause, it's
the pause, but it's hard to pause.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
It's hard to pause in such a fast paced world
when we're on social media all the time, and we're
being told.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
You know, and you just want to sometimes you just
want to go shopping and it's like kind of bad,
you know, and it's like, but that's how I stay.
Speaker 4 (49:51):
It's just the whole system is just so Yeah, and
it's hard to pause when you're in crisis. Yes, And
people who wish to men pipulate us want to keep
us in crisis. Yes, and that's why because you can't pause.
And that's what thought terminating cliches are, right, they mitigate
the pause. And you know, I talk about the cult
(50:12):
watch where it's always striking now o'clock, like the time
is now, you have to act now.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Which is we also see an advertising totally.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
Michael Flynn had some big post on X Today about
you know, the dangers and the evils and we have
to fight and we have to fight now and the
time is it's almost too late, and you know it's
a rallying cry.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
My one question about that is because like you're absolutely right, Also,
there are genuine systemic oppressions that occur that actually do
need to be fought. You know, when people are deprived
of doe process, when civilians are harmed who should not
be in it when there we're about to actually end
(50:54):
from global warming, when warm science is destroyed. You know, Like, so,
how do you do you think that we can differentiate
between like panic fear mongering that's meant to demonize people
and genuine fighting of injustice.
Speaker 4 (51:13):
Well, it's interested that you say due process just going
to pull this pause threat a little more. But that's
what due process is is a pause. Right, You're not
going to just execute a person. They're going to have
a trial, et cetera, et cetera. That's what checks and
balances are. Their pause so you don't actually get to
make this decision. You know, executive branch, we're going to
(51:36):
have a say, and it's going to be this process
and everything takes forever, and there's a lot of red
tape and bureaucracy gets demonized by autocratic factions. I think
because they're trying to mitigate the pause. I don't know
if that answer your question, but what kind of like
if we.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Are genuinely interested in truth, then investigation should be encouraged,
and it is discouraged when it is a party that
is only seeking power. And I think for folks who
are interested in upholding justice and fighting oppression authentically. Like
seeking truth and seeking it from multiple sources and not
(52:17):
just one is the goal because truth is how you
understand what happened and how to not recreate that.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Does this make any sense? I'm lost, but I think
you're not. Well.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
It just gets so complicated because then that exact advice
gets co opted. I mean, think about QAnon talking about
do the research.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Well, sure, but they want you to do the research
from their one guy with a blog, which is different
from myriad external reliable sources. But that is a whole
other conversation because the meaning of a reliable source has
become completely meaningless, right.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
But there is such a thing.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
And like one of the things we talk about a
lot as well is just the importance of having a
variety of sources. And like, even if you have a
variety of sources, it's still possible for them to all
becoming kind of from the same place and from the
same thinking patterns. So the idea is to diversify not
just in your community, but beyond your community. But it's
(53:22):
easier said than done in the algorithms that we are
currently locked into.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Algorithms are part of the problem for sure.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Yeah, I describe the algorithms as cult leaders, yes, y yeah,
because they the goal is to entrap us, right. They
do that by isolating us from our real life communities,
which they achieve by feeding us extreme content because it
has higher chances of engagement, and by love bombing us
with likes and bells and notifications and things. They spread disinformation,
(53:53):
which literally mitigates our ability to control what we do
and don't believe. And the whole point is to extract money,
to make money off of us, right, right, by taking
our attention for their advertisers and our data. Of course,
I think they're the most successful cult leaders ever.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Oh my god, that is so true.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yes, yeah, we've said it a million times, so sorry
for repeating ourselves all the time, old listeners. But like,
I think some people have this idea that the information
is out there, so of course you can just find it.
But the reality is we are I'm in such a
different bubble of social media than some of my friends, Like,
we are seeing completely different realities and that is not
(54:34):
our faults. That is the faults of corporations that are
trying to extract money from us.
Speaker 4 (54:39):
Yeah, control your environments another commonality.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yeah, Okay, let's le on something hopeful. Okay, where's the hope?
Speaker 3 (54:50):
So, yes, you mentioned there's some hope in this, and
we'd love to we'd love to get hooked in it.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Feed it to us, yes, soon, feed that to all
of us.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
I think the most radical thing we can do in
our current environment is to care for one another. It
sounds so cliche and and hackneyed, but community and mutual aid.
I think we have to bridge divides because cult like
thinking feeds off of division. Cults feed off of division,
and we are separated now from people who we think
(55:23):
are so different from us, and as you said, reading
multiple news sources, talking to people who have different ideas,
we have to find ways to bridge the divide, and
I think that happens a lot via.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
Community and mutual aid.
Speaker 4 (55:36):
I think we need to bridge the divisions within ourselves,
the so called human spirit divide. As you know, cult
leaders profit off of a divide itself. That's how they
conquer you, right, So I think ultimately bridging divides and
turning toward one another.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
And that's very hard to do on the internet currently.
So this is my new thing is let's get the
fuck off line and try to forge community where we
live and with people that in the past ten years
maybe we wouldn't talk to because we'd be so online.
I feel like learning how to engage with each other
in real life is maybe the most important thing we
(56:15):
have right now, and you just have to make sure
you don't make another cult happen.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Yeah, I have one last question for you, because I
genuinely want to know the answer, because I want to
do it. When you say kind of like fix the
gap in yourself, what does that look like?
Speaker 1 (56:34):
How do I do that? How do we do that?
Speaker 4 (56:38):
A friend of mine once we were at a party and
he said he feels like his body is a wheelchair
that carries his brain around. And I think about that
all the time because I feel a little bit the
same way. I think I've created a hierarchy within myself
of my brain is at the top and my body's
at the bottom. Yeah, And of course that's not true.
(57:00):
And even though I know it's not true, I can't
help but feel that way. And I think the more
I find personally that I can bridge that gap when
I get into my body, which I do through dancing, swimming,
you know, hiking.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
Yeah, it sounds like kill a million birds with one
stone and go for a walk with your friends.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
Yeah, go for a walk with someone ideologically opposed to you.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
It's hard.
Speaker 4 (57:33):
Yeah, Okay, cool, thank you for complaining that. I also
want to add to this list of hope. By the way,
based on our conversation, is the pause. Yeah, I love that.
Lean into the pause, Lean into the pause.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
And the pause for me, like often I'll have sort
of conflicting ideas inside myself, Like even if I'm feeling
connected to my body, there might be like a thought
that I'm fighting or like that's something that's subconscious that
I haven't yet brought to the contra And the pause
can help me name and identify what that inner battle is.
(58:06):
And like, once I bring to the surface, it is
so much less powerful.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
But that's for me. That's what makes me.
Speaker 2 (58:11):
Feel divided is when I have like two you know,
cognitive disiness.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:17):
Well, this is a fascinating book, and this has been
a really great conversation that I've learned a lot from.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
Tell us the name of your book again, and where
people can find it.
Speaker 4 (58:24):
It's called cults like us Why doomsday thinking drives America?
And you can find it. I think anywhere. At this point,
it's still available everywhere, and I do hope people will
be interested in it because I really want to spread awareness,
you know, as cult leaders say, I'm trying to make
the world a better place.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
Amazing, Thank you, thank you so much, Thanks guys. Okay,
that concludes our interview with the amazing Jane Borden.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Yeah, and I think it's worth noting that the last
chapter of this book is about love has won a Carlson,
and we did do an interview with her daughter, Mattie Stroud,
So give that.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
One a listen for sure.
Speaker 2 (59:05):
And now is the part of the episode where I
ask Megan if she would join this cult.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
Megan, would you join this cult of the Puritans? Absolutely not,
there is no way. Number one, I'm not sailing across
the ocean.
Speaker 4 (59:20):
No.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
Number two. In general, you're just you know, in general.
Speaker 3 (59:23):
Now, sure, if it's like a great cruise ship or something, Okay,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
Cruise trips are fun as well, just letting you know
I'm not on the Mayflower. Do you get it?
Speaker 3 (59:33):
Like?
Speaker 1 (59:33):
No? Oh, I think I would have been like adventure.
Speaker 3 (59:38):
No. And I don't think I would have left the
Catholic Church like they had pageantry.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
They had ritual beautiful iconograph. Yeah, just like weren't there
even wigs at some point? Like I'm not leaving that.
I don't know if that was a Catholic thing ro
which is an air thing? Ok? Cool? Sure?
Speaker 3 (59:56):
And then you want me to wear like wooden shoes
and massive choose its No.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Okay, she's a no on Puritans. Absolutely not. Yeah. I
think it's a tough it's a tough one to swallow.
It's a tough one. I don't think. I don't think
I'm becoming a.
Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Puritan, no, no, yeah, yeah, but you know it is.
It is really interesting to think about the roots of
America and how we became what we are today and
how it's evolved. And there's so many more episodes I
want to do on this like kind of stuff. Even
just thinking about manifest destiny, Like do you remember learning
about manifest destiny? Again, these are concepts I haven't thought
(01:00:33):
about since I was a child.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But it's like, you know, the belief.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
That like we're chosen and special and we deserve to
have this land and those other people are evil, Like.
Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
It's all very culty. Yeah from the beginning. Yeah, so
I wouldn't join the Puritans. But there's so many groups
that I would join, and we're going to get into
a lot of them with our conversations together.
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
So uh. On that note, stay tuned, stay two owned,
write us five stars, do whatever you want, and remember
to follow your gut, watch out for d flats, and
never ever trust me. Bye.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
This has been an exactly right production hosted by.
Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Me Lola Blanc and Me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer
is g.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Holly. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.
Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark
and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me coult podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation,
Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts
Trust me? Do you trust me?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
Everly?
Speaker 1 (00:05):
And you astrid to us? This is the truth, the
only truth.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't
welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme belief
and manipulation from two former cult members who've actually experienced it.
I am Lo Lablanc and I'm Megan Elizabeth. And today
our guest is Jane Borden, author of Cults Like Us
Why Doomsday Thinking drives America. Today, Jame's going to talk
(00:31):
to us about why the Puritans were actually a high
control group, how the ethos that working was a sign
of righteousness informs our current American belief that having a
lot of money is a sign of goodness, and how
pro natalism and the idea that the correct people should
be having more babies is not only incredibly dangerous but
also another form of doomsdayism.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We'll talk about the American monometh and why it makes
us interested in authoritarian style leadership, How the Book of
Revelation is not quite what we think it is, how
all this black and white thinking is just a way
to make sense of the chaos, and how self help
and marketing are their own forms of cultic thinking.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Before we get to our guest, Megan, what is the
cultiest thing of the week for you?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
My cultiest thing of the week is just learning more
about Lauri Bellow. Do you remember her? Yes, of the
Chad day Bell case. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
She's a woman who is accused of murdering her two
children with her husband, Chad day Bell, who they're also
accused of killing a whole slew of other people. He
wrote like doomsday almost romance novels in my opinion, that
she got super obsessed with. And who knows if he
believed it, but I do think she believed that they
(01:40):
were coming true, kind of bringing in this new heralding
in this kind of revelation into being. They ended up
killing their two children. They found the bodies anyway, Chad
day Bell has been sentenced to the death penalty.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, And I read that Laurie is defending herself and court.
No she's not, Yes, she is. Wow. She is very good.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I mean, don't get me wrong, She's going to be
found guilty, but she's very good at like flirting.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Are you watching the trial?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
No, but I watched the documentary and like she gets
pulled over and and she's just like, oh my gosh,
my lipstick.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I can't find it. Oh my god, where is it?
And and like you let her go. She's very flirtatious and.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
She's very out of things. So uh yeah, that's mine.
What a fascinating person. Whenever somebody decides to represent themselves
in court, I automatically assume that they are mentally very
mentally unwell, because why would you do that unless you're
like the sickest lawyer of all time, And even then
you would know you want a team like she.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
And she's not a lawyer, and she's like, I've been
reading books. Good for you, Lorie.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
You will end up in jail and you should and
you should and you should.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
This is the part where we go to your cultiest
thing of the week, because we both do one. What's
your cultiest thing of the week.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
My cultiest thing of the week is something I actually
I'm gonna say I don't think is a cult, but
there are there are just like elements of group gatherings that.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
That can feel cult eat to be. Okay, So I started.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Going to alan on And for those of you who
don't know what allan on is, because I've learned in
the past few weeks that everybody thinks that allan On.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Is just AA which it's not.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
AA is for people who are alcoholics or addicts. Alan
On is for people who have been affected by people
who are alcoholics or addicts. So it's you know, your
mom's an alcoholic, if your loved one is an addict.
That's the program that you go to. And it's also
a twelve step program. It's just a slightly different program.
(03:49):
There's a lot of like, you know, people like me
who have who are extremely Type A and want to
fix everything and make everything better, which is, yeah, are
you going.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
To alan On because you're host is an alcoholic? Oh
my god, I can't believe it took me this long.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I'm in the program too, guys. It's fine. The AA
one Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
My brother is an addict, and people who you know,
have listened to some of our old episodes will know
that that's been an ongoing thing. He did overdose and
he has a brain injury now. But I actually went
because of a breakup that happened and just kind of
some realizations I'd had about some of my own patterns.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
And.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
It's my first twelve step program.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
I mean I've gone to like a couple to support people,
you know, but it's the first one I'm going to
for myself, so I'm getting the most like clear window
into how it works.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Like what I love about it and what I think
prevents it from a being a cult is that there's
no central leadership. Responsibilities change hands all the time, so
there really isn't room for someone to be like this
is the way to do it, or at least there's
there are safeguards against that, yep. But of course some
of the other things that will happen in any kind
of support group were recurring gathering I think are like
(05:02):
the language. There's like language that everybody uses. There's like
catchphrases and slogans, and I'm like, I don't why are
you all saying the same thing?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I don't. Yeah, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You know your secret language, Yeah you have, there is
a secret language. And obviously this is not what everybody does.
But like some people will get up and talk and
I'll notice they're applying the alan On principles to everything
in their life as opposed to just the things that
applies to which also you know, as we know, like
when you think one thing is the answer to all
(05:34):
things in your life, that can be maybe making it
too important totally.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But like it's great.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, it's great, and I think it's really helpful. And
if anyone actually does have an addict in their life
like me, I recommend going, even though I'm so uncomfortable
when I'm there because I'm like this, I'd be vulnerable
in front of people and not like in the podcast
way where I'm like just talk, but like I have to, like, actually,
you know, it's different, and if anybody has an addict
and their brain like me, go take care of it.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
The only thing I don't like is when they refer
to it as a family. Ooh yeah, yeah, I was like, no,
we're not. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Sometimes the higher power talk bothers me, but as an atheist,
but I have been to meetings where they're very good
about not overusing like God language and more just saying
higher power.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
But yeah, it's what an interesting new thing in my life.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Absolutely shocking. Honestly, I'm very proud of you, but it
can thank you. Yeah, but sometimes we need that. I
had no idea that the Puritans were one of the
most impactful cults in American history, and they just came
in hot from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
And to provide some context for this episode, because we
were a little hazy on some of this history, and
maybe some of y'all are too, here's just a little
little overview to set us up.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
The Puritans left England because they wanted to create their own, improved,
more extreme, purified version of the Church of England, which
they thought hadn't gone far enough in its reforms after
breaking away from the Catholic Church. They didn't know that, yeah, same,
the Church of England was trying to establish itself as
like a mandatory religion, and the Puritans believed that they
(07:16):
should be able to do the religion however they wanted
without like a leader or a state head or whatever
telling them how to do it and running the show.
But they didn't actually want religious pluralism. They just wanted
to create a society where they could do religion their
way and make everyone else also do it that way,
which is the same thing, ironically. And then they settled
in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in sixteen thirty and within
(07:39):
ten years they were the colony's majority group. So it
informed so much of what America became after that.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, and they didn't even expect to be there for
ten years. They thought the apocalypse was high noon arriving.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Which is what Jane Morden is going to tell us
all about. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Welcome Jane Borden to trust me. Thank you so much
for joining us, Thank you for having me. I'm excited
to be here. You're here with us today because you
wrote a book called Cults Like Us Why Doomsday Thinking
Drives America? Which seems somewhat relevant right now to our culture.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
What inspired you to write this book? First of all
to answer those questions? What's going on? How did we
get here? Why is this happening?
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I had become very preoccupied with the division in the
nation after Trump's first election. How can people who are
really mostly the same be so divided or see themselves
as so divided? Where's that coming from? And so I
had all that rolling around in my brain while I
was also doing some cult.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Reporting for Vanity Fair.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
And I was a religious studies major in college, and
I've sort of always been interested in belief, and so
in this sort of muck of things rolling around in
my brain, it dawned on me one day that the
Puritans were kind of a could I mean, if people
today look back at them, we would call them a cold.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Can you tell us why that is?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Because I really my knowledge of Puritans is like from
some third grade class where what picture book like maybe
had a turkey or something like you.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Were like, yeah, tracing your hand, and that's the extent
of it. I was reading this like it was a
fairy tale, like had I had no idea any of
it was real.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Well, we don't learn those parts because they're a little
inconvenient or unflattering at least, Right, But the Puritans, first
of all, they were a doomsday group, so they believe
the end was very near, and they hoped they were
among the chosen. And they were fleeing England because they
thought that armageddon was coming to England. They thought God
(09:57):
was first going to punish England before.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
The rest of the world.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah, And they thought England's crime was that it had
not purified the Church of England enough, it had not
made it distinct enough from the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Right, I did not realize that they were just more
extreme than the Church that they were fleeing. Like in
my head, I was like, Oh, they just wanted to
practice religious freedom. But it sounds like they were like,
you guys, aren't letting us be extreme enough and you
aren't like going hard enough in your religion.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, and they were derided.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
I mean they were called hot Protestants, which I love ye,
and you know they got executed.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
They were spit on.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
They were not popular, these people, and you can kind
of understand why.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I mean, you know, they didn't dance.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
There was no you weren't even allowed to like love
your kids or your spouse very much, because if you
loved anything more than.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
God, that was bad.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
They were kind of boring to a degree, like if
they were at a dinner party, you'd be like leave, right.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Do you must we sit on people for being boring?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Well, I mean, I don't know if this is the
quite the right moment for it, but that leads to
a big persecution complex, right exactly. Everyone hates me, everyone
hates us. We're gonna but guess what, God loves us. Yeah,
and you're gonna pay, and you're gonna pay. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So can you tell us a little bit about how
the Puritans were in fact a high control group when
they got here and how that kind of evolved.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Yeah, so you know, high control group means belief was controlled,
behavior was controlled, information intake controlled. They did this by
pushing conformity. It was a culture of punishment, so everything
you could be punished for. I mean it was kind
of I don't know how they lived their lives in
constant fears how they live their lives, which is motivating,
(11:48):
you know, to conform. But for example, swearing was illegal, flirting, gossiping,
You couldn't disagree with the minister. A woman got turned
in by her survey because the servant overheard her expressing
a disagreement with the minister. It was illegal to skip church.
The servant people were turned into informants, and so you
(12:10):
were walking on eggshells all the time. They made it
very difficult to get into the church. So there was
this thing that you desperately wanted that was always just
out of reach. And so the idea was that no
one knows who is or isn't going to be saved
on Doomsday because only God knows that and also He's
(12:31):
chosen it, you know, before you were born. But they
were still like, we're pretty sure we know, and we're
pretty sure we are sure. And so the way they
determined that or proved it was just by looking within,
you know, just kind of sit with yourself and look
for signs of grace, and if you feel like you
find it, then you're probably among the chosen, and therefore
(12:52):
you can gain jury into the church. But the longer
the Puritan settlement was around in Boston, the harder they
made entry into the church to get This was very
much because the magistrates wanted to hold onto power. They
were corrupted by power, and the more people who could
get into the church, the less power they had. And
so they started telling people, you know, are you sure,
(13:15):
are you sure you found grace? Maybe you should go
look again. There's probably wickedness in there somewhere. And so
church numbers shrank, and this all led to a variety
of crises because they were a theocracy, and how do
you govern at any rate? And so there's all these
stories about in the second and third generations about people
who get power holding on to it and not letting go.
(13:35):
And sometimes they would change the rules rather than seed power,
which is something we always see in high control groups
and cults.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So really what we're talking about is power.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Always well What are the origins of this sort of
doomsday thinking or has this just always been around like
in every religion or is this a uniquely American thing.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I think it's especially American, but it's certainly not unique.
Apocalyptic thinking in general, which just means thinking that the
world is going to end, that instead of everything being
a circle, it's a line with a destination. That is
a relatively new development. It pretty much came about with Monotheism,
with the development of Monotheism, so it started with the Zoroastrians,
(14:31):
and from there it very much influenced Judaism and from there,
you know, the Christianity, the Jesus Cult, as some called it,
was an apocalyptic group. Christianity is an apocalyptic religion in
many ways, and we've moved away from that modern Christianity has,
but it's there at the roots. And then it flared
(14:51):
hugely around following the Reformation, and the Puritans brought it
to America. Can you say a little bit about Roger Williams. Yeah,
so he was a radical among the radicals. He showed
up shortly after the Puritans setup shop in Boston and
began criticizing the Church magistrates. He thought that the Church
(15:14):
in Boston had not gone far enough to purify itself
of the evils of the Satanic pope.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
He basically thought we should be worshiping the way Jesus
and his apostles did. So no structure, no church. He
would only pray with his wife. In later years he
only prayed alone, and so he wanted He kind of
wanted to burn it all down, and the church was
not happy about this. They tried to kick him out.
He caught wind of it, fled south and essentially found
(15:47):
at Rhode Island. And what's fascinating to me about him
is that he's become the grandfather of the separation of
church and state. Like the Establishment Clause the First Amendment
came from his ideas. But ultimately he was just trying
to bring Jesus back.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
He just wanted more church.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
He thought, Jesus isn't going to come back unless you
get rid of church structure. And I want Jesus to
come back. Everybody wants the world to end, so everybody
wants they want they want to see it, and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
They want to see everybody go to hell more than
they even want to go to Heaven. They want to
see their enemies go to hell punished. That's right, it's
freaking weird.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I write about this poem, The Day of Doom, which
was is considered America's first bestseller. It's hugely popular in
Puritan New England, and it's the story of doomsday. It's
a long form poem and I think two hundred and
twenty some standas are dedicated to people getting it right,
like wailing and begging for mercy and being denied and
thrown into the lake.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Affair, gnashing of teeth and gnashing of teath duck in
my brain.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
But before any of that happens, the saints, the elect,
the chosen are pulled up to heaven so they can
help and watch.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, that's their first reward. My goodness, loved ones and
they're friends God. Yeah, anything to feel special. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You wrote about how there are values of like hard
work and how this was virtuous to be like kind
of constantly working because that meant you were righteous somehow
because you weren't distracted. How did that like stick in
American culture and how does it relate to kind of
what we see today in evangelical.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Culture why we worship billionaires.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah, this one's interesting because the Puritans were very clear
on the boat on the way over, you know, they said,
you will give to your neighbor if your neighbor needs it,
even if you think you're not going to get that
money back.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That's just how we roll. Get on board or go
back to England, you know.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
But over time this shifted because of their idea that
the way you worshiped God was by having a calling
by working. They thought that God only created us because
he wanted to be worshiped, and that the way we
did it was by working hard. So the harder you worked,
the more you loved God. So what that meant is
that if you're working really hard, you're going to start
(18:06):
accruing wealth.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
It's inevitable.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
And so is wealth then really bad or is it
just a sign of how much you love God and
a sign that maybe He loves you in turn if
he's rewarding you, right, yes, So then eventually, over time
it became okay to acquire money. Acquisitiveness stopped being this
evil sin and started being something good and righteous.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, because also if you have grace, then you would
get wealth. So it's this kind of circular thinking that
begins too.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And therefore, if you have wealth, you must have grace. Yes,
and so John Rockefeller famously said that he got his
money from God.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
But of course, the people who believe this are generally
people who are buying into an unscientific shall we say, reality,
because we know that having wealth is what enables you
to create more wealth, the bootstraps. Can you talk a
little bit about the bootstraps myth of America?
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, it is a myth.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
I believe that people who follow this doctrine that the
wealthy are that the number in your bank account represent
your moral character, right, because the inverse of the wealthy
being among the chosen is that the impoverished are sinners.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah. Right.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
The idea is, if you're poor, well, surely that God
wants you to be poor. You know, God assessed you
and decided you weren't worthy, and so why should we
help the poor?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Sin should be punished?
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Right, And so we see this this bootstrapping ethic preached
to the poor, when in fact there are constraints set
in place that keep them from ever becoming rich. Because
when you have money, you don't want to give it away,
and so this doctrine becomes a very handy justification to
not just hold your wealth, but as I argue in
(19:56):
the book, actually mine the lower classes of their wealth,
because again, if you see them as sinners, you see
them as just another part of the natural world, which,
according to the Puritan ethos, we're supposed to be mining
and extracting from and using for our own benefit.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Oh god, it's baked in there, it's really it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Really it reminds me of the law of attraction that like,
you just aren't thinking, you're not doing it right if
you're not attracting enough like wealth and success into your life.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
What I took away from this in a bigger way
was like luck is so scary for Americans to wrap
their head around.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And probably you know, many cultures.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Like randomness, the randomness, the fear of the unknown, so
that everything must have a reason and a reward or
a punishment.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yes, the world is just.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
It's the just world hypothesis, right, which is that cognitive
bias where we are prone to believing that things are
the way they are because they're supposed to be that
way and because the world is just. So if somebody
is really wealthy, they must be wealthy because they did
good things and they are correct and righteous and if
they're poor, it must be their fault.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
That makes things easier to accept than the chaos. Yeah,
the chaos. We talk about the chaos a lot. It
is really difficult to accept the chaos. Yeah, and that's
what feels coolt like thinking, right, trying to create order
out of chaos.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
So I want to hear a bit about the American
mono myth. Where does that come from and.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
So in the nineteen seventies, a couple of scholars named
John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett started chatting about the
Vietnam War and how it was possible that Americans could
be stomaching so much violence right, And over time and
over time they realized they started to see this pattern
in pop culture and they eventually named it the American
(21:58):
mono myth. And it's it's a troupe that you see
in film and comic books, westerns, and the basic storyline
is that there's a small Edenic like community that's under
threat and the government and the police force are ill equipped.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
They can't stop it. What's everyone going to do? Oh?
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Wow, here comes this hero, this outsider who literally appears
out of nowhere. Or they're within the community, but they're
like a loner in the community, right, and they kill
all the bad guys essentially with scalpel precision, and then
they disappear from whence they came. And so the solution
is always violence, and like I said, it's precise, so
(22:47):
there are never innocent casualties, only the bad guys die.
Therefore it's like a cleansing violence, it's a righteous violence.
And Jewet and Lawrence trace this to something called Indian
captivity narratives, which came out of the Puritan era, and
these were true life stories written by people who had
(23:09):
been captured and then rescued from you know, native communities,
and it was always a violent rescue and then the
wilderness was cleansed and then became safe again for the
white settlers afterward.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Was the idea.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
And so this genre really exploded in the twenties and
thirties with the development of westerns and superhero comics.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
But it's in everything.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
I mean, there were three movies out last month that
follow this trope, which ones The Accountant.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Okay, haven't I mean, I probably haven't seen any of them,
but go on.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
What's the one with romy Malik where he goes out
on a vigilante killing spray for everyone who killed his wife.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Oh, I don't know, I for guessing. Yeah, he I'm
real behind on movies. You know, they're vigilanting like Death Wish.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, is an American model, with Star Wars even Jaws.
I mean, you really start to see it everywhere if
you're looking. But so where I really see the origin
of this, You know, if you want to go back
farther than the Indian captivity nerves is in the Book
of Revelation.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Please tell us about this. Yes, is so fascinating. What
is the Book of Revelation and how did we get
it wrong?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Oh? My gosh.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
So the Book of Revelation was written around ninety CE,
and it's a work of anti Roman propaganda. It was
written by one of Jesus, an early follower, this guy
John of Patmos is what he's called, and he was
a Jew, right, and it was written in response to
(24:47):
the Roman occupation. So I believe it was sixty six
Rome just destroyed Jerusalem. The Jews had tried to fight
back and it was horrific, and so their thinking was okay,
but Jesus is coming back any day now, he said,
he was going to be back in our light in
a generation, in our lifetime. It had been sixty years
(25:10):
and he still hadn't come back. And so basically, this
guy John of Patmos delivered the rescue narrative that the
community needed. Interesting and so it's a story of divine
retribution and it's very much coded. Scholars can tell that
it's written about Rome. So the various headed beasts, you know,
(25:31):
one heads for each of the Roman emperors. The six
six six is a reference to Nero. People think that
the mark of the beast referenced Roman coins because a
lot of Jews at the time didn't want to carry
around Roman money because you know their God, Ask God
on the money.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Ask God on the money exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
So in the Story of Revelation, there is again this
outsider who kind of shows up out of nowhere to
kick off the retribution, and it's Jesus in this case.
He appears as a slaughtered lamb, as the innocent slaughtered
lamb whose hand is sort of pushed, as the one
who's chosen to begin opening all these scrolls, which rains
(26:14):
terror on the earth. Incredibly violent, ecstatically violent. The Book
of Revelation at one point an angel collects all of
the wicked on the earth.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
This is the grapes of wrath. Reference.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
He collects all the grapes of the earth, which is
the wicked, and puts them in a giant wine press
and smushes them and so much blood comes out that,
oh my god, that it creates a river as high
as a horse's bridle that flows for two hundred miles.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Okay, it's really creative, though. You have to hand it too.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
And I know, and I just want to state for
the record, growing up and the cult that I did,
we read this as completely literal. I would get tucked
into my little bed every night and think about revelations
and just be like, I'm scared. And whenever we would
leave to go anywhere by two parents would go. Is
(27:09):
that what you want to be wearing when Jesus comes
back to the earth. Is this where you want to
be going when Jesus.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Comes back to the earth, Because you are, you'll be
squished like you'll.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Like a grape. I just wanted to go to the
mall and I'd be like, God, get zooks or heaven, I.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Don't know, Oh my god, I love get zukes over.
I like forgot about it for the last twenty years.
You mentioned how like this is just like a completely
different Jesus from the Old Testament or from the previous Jesus, that.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
It's like an actual genus.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, if you were writing this character in a screenplay,
you'd be like, why does he suddenly completely change everything
about his motivation and his behavior? And I would be like,
this character doesn't make any sense, please rewrite it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah, it's like miss understood who wrote this chapter? Right?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yeah, So the reason Revelation got canonized is in part
because people thought John was like John the Apostle, the
guy who wrote the Gospel of John, although that's also
up for debate, but that John they thought was that John.
So they thought, well, anything this guy wrote needs to
be in the Bible. But in fact it was written
by another John, which was a bit of an oopsie
(28:24):
but so wild. Yeah, and there were you know, there
were some people at the time who who saw the
distinction and kind of raised their hands, but they didn't
they didn't win the day. And there were also people
at the time when I say at the time, I
mean when the New Testament was canonized, who were like,
this is insane, you know. Yeah, it's it's it feels
(28:47):
a little insane.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
It's interesting how much that influenced so much of the
rest of history and like you know, used as a
justification for so much violence.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
This guy was just journaling.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
He was just family fantasy, little vision board fantasy.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
And now my whole childhood was right. Yeah, well it's
all about a number of other things.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean, like the planet was. It's just like forever
fucked because he had a little fantasy.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
We had a vision.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
He was and he was in the spirit, right, which
is what you did back then before you So there
were lots of revelations at the time. His wasn't the
only one. It's just the one that stood the test
of time. But but you would get in the spirit.
So whether that means they were taking mind altering substances
or like spinning around in circles until they got dizzy,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, I'm going to quote you, oh because I wrote
a quote about the American monomoth. Okay, the American monomth
undermines our nations founding ideology democracy. It subconsciously encourages the
public to forego the messy, laborious, and painstaking process of
cooperation and compromise by instead waiting for a superhero and
then granting that figure unlimited and unchecked power. It's a
(30:00):
passive public desiring a totalitarian leader. This is so interesting
to me because I don't feel drawn to these stories.
I don't know if you feel drawn to these stories,
but certainly every man I've ever dated has been drawn
to these stories.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It feels like such a masculine thing.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Do you.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Find that, like there is more of a craving for
that authoritarian style leadership in particular periods, or like right
now in particular, like what makes us crave that, or
at least what makes men crave that?
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Well, indoctrination into it as we all have been in America,
and not least because of these narratives showing up in
every film, especially today, it feels like but also you know,
as you know, cult like thinking increases during times of crisis,
So whether that's people joining cults, like the number of
the proliferation of cults, or whether that's just increases at
(30:57):
the society level in the kind of cult like thinking.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I explore the book, and so.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
We're experiencing a time of extreme crisis right now. Sociologists
point specifically to technological revolution. Social media has completely changed
the way we communicate with one another.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
The algorithms have changed the way we live AI.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Of course, we don't even know yet how that's going
to reshape society.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Global warming doing us no favors.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Global warming being the biggest crisis humanity has yet faced
social upheaval, so me too. The quote unquote woke movement
America is going to be minority majority soon. These are
leading people to freak out. This is leading to a
political backlash, which we've seen. It's also leading to huge
increases in quote like thinking. And the most pressing crisis,
(31:46):
in my opinion, facing Americans right now is income inequality.
Majority of Americans are chronically under resourced. And there's nothing
that causes your world to wobble more again that chaos, right,
and being unresourced. And so we're seeing huge increases in
cult like thinking right now. And I think it's swept
(32:07):
Donald Trump into the White House. Yeah, because we want
an autocrat. We are currently flirting with autocracy.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
To say the least.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yes, Yeah, it's like when we are in survival mode,
all we want is some hope for relief and for
somebody to fix it and make it better. And when
someone comes in with easy answers and black and white
thinking and says I will fix it, I will make
it better, of course we're going to be drawn to that,
and especially in times of great division, where we are
(32:38):
being told by media over and over again, the people
who disagree with us are bad and evil and wrong and.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
We should be against them.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Like, we're just so primed right now for the situation
that we're currently in with leadership that is not interested
in checks on its power at all, which is how
cults operate. The inability to critique, the ability to question,
to dissent in any way like that is authoritarianism, and
that is exactly the same as cults.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
And we saw that happening with the Puritans after the
Antinomian controversy, which was basically just a time when this
woman Ann Hutchinson was like, hey, I disagree with you,
and they were like shut it down.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And Anna Hutchinson sounded so cool. She sounds cool, right, yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
These people were all a little crazy, right right right.
We like them because we feel like they were fighting
the enemy, but we might not want to hang out
with them at dinner hard to say, hard to say, yeah,
but yeah, So they quashed descent. They did away with
the practice of question and answers after sermons because it
was too vexing, which is like what we see happening
(33:46):
right now with Trump shutting down universities. They banished Hutchinson
and a bunch of other people who fled to the
new colony of Rhode Island where all the radicals went.
That was around the time they founded Harvard. And there
were lots of reasons behind Harvard's founding, but one of
them was to indoctrinate youth. I mean, they really brought
(34:07):
down the hammer in response to critique. Fascinating considering Harvard
is the one school that is standing up to Trump
right now. You drew a connection between doomsdaism and this
panic right now about declining birth rates, and I just
would love to hear more about how some of these
ideas are just another form of doomsday thinking.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
So, people who ascribe to pronatalists thinking have a variety
of beliefs, So I don't want to loop everyone under
one umbrella. But some of the people in that movement
believe that if elites in America, specifically stop having kids,
that that's going to be the end of civilization. So
inherent in that already is the assumption that America and
(34:53):
Western civilization is civilization right right, which is the chosen nation,
chosen people thing, which is very puritan.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
And very rooted in white supremacy, yep, the myth of
the Anglo Saxon and all that.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
So the idea behind pronatalism that is shared by the
eugenics movement is that only really certain people should be
having more kids, right, And so we hear some in
the pronatalist movement saying, you know, let's give child tax
(35:28):
credits and you know, money for universal pre K and
that sort of thing. But we also hear people like well,
for example, Elon Musk was quoted by an anonymous friends
as like encouraging all his rich friends to have kids.
So it's it's whose genes do we want right to spread?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:50):
And ultimately I believe this is all just a way
for people with power to replicate their own power. That's
what's happening in the eugenics movement, and I think that's
what's happening now, and that's what cult leaders do. I mean,
Elon Musk has had thirteen kids, I think at this
point that we know of Warren Jeff's had sixty, Malachi
(36:10):
Yorck had three hundred. Jeffrey Epstein had plans to seed
the earth by impregnating up to twenty women at a time. Oh,
my god, until I don't know. And so this is
power replicating itself, and this is people behaving like gods,
trying to literally reshape society in their own image.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah, I'm saying, we have a lot of money, so
we're inherently good. We're virtuous and virtuous and chosen by God,
and so we'll just replicate it. There was an interesting
part of your book about sterilization and how back in
the day people would be like, you, guys shouldn't have kids,
and we choose who should have more and who shouldn't
have any.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
There were mass sterilizations, and this was at the beginning
of the twentieth century. Between sixty and seventy thousand Americans
were sterilized a lot, most out here in California. Yeah,
and the Supreme Court ruling, the Buck v. Bell ruling
that said it was legal to do that is still
in the books. Well, but so the justification for I
(37:13):
get to choose who does and doesn't pro create, and
I'm going to base it on you replicating the power
of rich white people. The justification for that is the
search for perfectionism, the pursuit of perfectionism, which is a
cult like thinking which comes from the Puritans. So the
idea is like, maybe we don't have to wait for
(37:35):
God to deliver New Jerusalem as he does at the
end of the Book of Revelation. Maybe we can reach
New Jerusalem ourselves. If we perfect society, if we perfect
human civilization, then we will create heaven for ourselves. And
that's what we saw happening before and during the eugenics movement.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Real quick, y'all to give some content for the landscape
of pro natalism today and how it relates to eugenics
and racism. At natal con the pro natalist convention in
twenty twenty three, a far right businessman presented on the
importance of men only spaces and said the Civil Rights
Act of nineteen sixty four and its progeny are probably
the single most destructive set of laws in American history,
(38:19):
and all should be wiped forever from the history of
this nation. You can see why this is a problem.
The organizer of natal Khan has promoted people like discredited
race science advocate Charles Murray, who thinks poor women have
low IQs because of their inferiority and therefore should not
have children, and has described love between men and women
as a relationship between superior and inferior. Obviously, there are
(38:43):
a ton of extremely dangerous ideas in this movement. We
will do a full episode on that kind of thinking
very soon to dive deeper into some of those beliefs.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
It reminds me of the Human Potential movement, which is
kind of this very American idea that we all have
within us, this almost Jesus like potential to be perfect.
It's been going on for forever. Think and grow rich.
All of these books are like, you're thinking is the
root of the problems, and Heaven is here in your brain.
(39:12):
There's a part of Christ in you that's totally pure,
and just fix your brain and you'll get there. And
if you don't get better, then you haven't fixed your brain, right,
And so you should keep paying for my course courses. Yeah, Yeah,
I'm really susceptible to self help and.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
We all are.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
Yeah, And there's nothing wrong with self help. The problem
is that we get exploited by people who are trying
to take our money. Yes, and they do it via
our latent indoctrination.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, and just the never ending pursuit of more and
better and heaven and perfect Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
And the study suggests that the more we engage in
self reflection, constantly looking inward and trying to improve ourselves,
it makes us sick. It doesn't make us happier, it
doesn't make us better. I was so this was so
interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
You mentioned Rena Raphael's book I love her how she
describes the modern spiritual consumer as creating individualized, bespoke practices
and belief systems by basically picking and choosing, you know, spirituality.
But then you talked about this twenty eighteen study. I
thought this study was so interesting. So I'm just going
(40:23):
to read an excerpt of your writing from your book
for our listeners. A twenty eighteen study identified among its
participants two basic strategies for seeking happiness, one social and
one individual. The study determined that people with the goals
of seeing friends and family more, joining a nonprofit, or
helping people in need reported increased life satisfaction a year later.
(40:44):
Those who focused on goals such as staying healthy, finding
a better job, or quitting smoking reported no increase in
life satisfaction. In fact, the self focused road to happiness
was even less effective than having no plans for action
at all. That is so interesting, period, Exactly Why is
it just because we're like looping on like almost this
(41:05):
obsessive like am I happy yet?
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Am I happy yet? Am I happy yet?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Like? I think so, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
that's part of it. I think the other part of
is that actual sources of happiness come from community, come
from mutual aid.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Which is also what cults give people, which is the problem.
You know, that's so tricky. It's so tricky.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I think it's like it's such a delicate little framework.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah yeah, but community is what ultimately seems to raise
people's lived experience.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yeah, And it just like hammers home for me that
the self help which you wrote about, the self help
culture is sort of a never ending like it's a
bottomless the goal will never really be achieved because it
does become this endless cycle of we need to purchase
more courses, more books, more seminars, And that's by design, right,
(41:55):
Like if the answer was actually achievable. They would stop
making money, it right, it would cease to be a customer.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Yeah, they're just creating more courses for you. So I
went to the Tony Robbins conference where we walked across
hot coals chanting like I think it was like.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
I believe in me or something.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Anyway, then afterwards you're like, oh my god, yay, I've
overcome this huge fear. And then he's like, and here's
a bundle for the next part. And I remember being
really young and being like, well, this is fucking crazy.
A bundle, A bundle like a wellness bundle, like classes and.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
More for you to buy, more for you to buy.
You thought you'd reach the dusky. I thought i'd reach Nirvana.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I was a firewalker, right, and no, there was lots
more to do, and it was very sad and I
didn't do it, but a lot of people did. And
I can see why. If I had the money, I
probably would have. But yeah, kind of creating this breaking
down is what he did. Sorry, Tony, if you're listening
to this, just these groups kind of break you down
(43:01):
in the beginning part and I'm like, you're nothing, and
then build you back up and then you're kind of hooked.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
And that's what colts do, the exactly down and rebuild
you in their own image.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Well, and as you pointed out in the book, that's
also what advertising and marketing do. And can you talk
a little about Edward Burne's Yeah, the Father of spin
he which is a great book I relied on quite
a bit. He considered himself to have invented more or
less public relations.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
That's not exactly true, but being a spin master, he
wrote his own narrative. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud,
and so he began his career baby but okay, yeah,
a little bit. He began his career working in you
know what would later be known as pr and he
(43:54):
went to visit his uncle and came back to New
York just full of beans about this idea of what
if I take my uncle's ideas about the subconscious and
desire and apply it to advertising?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
What a perfect storm?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Yeah, yeah, and became incredibly successful, revolutionized the industry and
changed the way we purchase. So before then, before Burnese
bb basically advertising was needs based, like, hey, we have
this product, you might need it.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Do you need it? It's pretty cool if you do.
Speaker 4 (44:32):
And that's oversimplifying things a little bit, but after Burne's
it's this advertisement is going to create in you a
need that did not previously exist, and we're going to
do that by tickling your latent desires and your latent indoctrination,
and then you're going to see this as the cure
for what ails you.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
It's so smart, it's so brilliant, it's so Friday, and
he was able to like incorporate symbolism and just cut
straight to your unconscious ping. I mean, it's like a
mini little cull if like break creating a need and
then filling it Like it's genius if what you want
to do is make a lot of money. Yes, But
then didn't political figures in America sort of take notice
(45:15):
and become interested.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
So, at the time, America was overproducing and there was
a glut. There was too much stuff headed into the marketplace,
and so the problem was do we scale back these
engines of production, which could be bad for the economy,
or do we find another way? And so they heard
about what Brenees was doing and were like, hey, can
(45:38):
you find a way to convince people to buy all
these things that they don't need and sure can, sure can.
And that's really when the American economy became addicted to
the consumer marketplace as a driver.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
What a lovely thing that happened.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's been really good for all of us.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Yeah. Bernez was a fascinating character, and you can tell
that he maybe did question a little bit of his
motives because he would espouse ideas publicly that we're a
little counter to what he believed. But he certainly didn't
have a lot of compunction about doing what he did.
And a reporter during the Nazi regime found a copy
(46:24):
of Burne's book in Grobbel's office on his shelves.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
I mean, it makes sense because you do have to manipulate.
You have to exploit people's inner desires in order to
convince them that you of anything, but especially you really
need to convince them that an entire group of people
is so horrible that they all deserve to die. I mean,
like the different forms that manipulation takes, and how much
(46:51):
we are all manipulatable, and how much that is exploited
by people in power, It just never ceases to amaze me.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
It is also connected.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, and it's easy to feel super hopeless about all
of it.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:05):
Yeah, And that was a concern for me when I
started researching and writing the book, But I ultimately found
a lot of hope because when we see the magic trick,
we stopped falling for it. And I think when we
don't recognize that these beliefs are driving us, then we're
going to be exploited again and again. But when we
(47:27):
can see, oh, this is not the way life is
or the way I think. This is one driving idea
among many, and I can take it or leave it,
then we're less likely to be exploited. And so I
think when we can recognize and then acknowledge and articulate
(47:47):
the ways Puritan doomsday ideology is still driving America, the
less likely we are to fall prey to it.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Can you give us an example of that?
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Can you take that from like the unconscious to the
conscious so to speak? And tell I'm curious of what
it would look like in myself of like I have
a thought and then I undo it?
Speaker 1 (48:08):
How correct question? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Well, I think you know, I think you experienced it
at the end of that Tony Robbins thing, right, you know, Oh,
this is the end I reached Nirvana.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Oh no, wait, you're telling me there's more.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
You know, you very easily could have said, oh yeah, no,
I'm not there yet, right right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
For me, it's like I think, especially just given social
media and we know how quickly oversimplified information spreads because
it's just easier to process in our brains.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
But like, if we can get better at.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Noticing the underlying narrative, Like, is a group of people
being demonized?
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Here? Am I being encouraged to think in black and white? Here?
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Am I being told that there's one group that is
the reason for all of my problems? My like big
guest hope with this podcast is to like foster that
kind of thinking in people, just literally pausing and being like,
what am I being told to believe about others? Am
I being sold an easy solution that maybe is oversimplified,
(49:16):
Like you know, Daniel Kahman talks about just like literally
pausing to examine our biases instead of just being on
autopilot alone can do so much work for us.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Right yeah, yeah, No, I mean it's the pause, it's
the pause, but it's hard to pause.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
It's hard to pause in such a fast paced world
when we're on social media all the time, and we're
being told.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
You know, and you just want to sometimes you just
want to go shopping and it's like kind of bad,
you know, and it's like, but that's how I stay.
Speaker 4 (49:51):
It's just the whole system is just so Yeah, and
it's hard to pause when you're in crisis. Yes, And
people who wish to men pipulate us want to keep
us in crisis. Yes, and that's why because you can't pause.
And that's what thought terminating cliches are, right, they mitigate
the pause. And you know, I talk about the cult
(50:12):
watch where it's always striking now o'clock, like the time
is now, you have to act now.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Which is we also see an advertising totally.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
Michael Flynn had some big post on X Today about
you know, the dangers and the evils and we have
to fight and we have to fight now and the
time is it's almost too late, and you know it's
a rallying cry.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
My one question about that is because like you're absolutely right, Also,
there are genuine systemic oppressions that occur that actually do
need to be fought. You know, when people are deprived
of doe process, when civilians are harmed who should not
be in it when there we're about to actually end
(50:54):
from global warming, when warm science is destroyed. You know, Like, so,
how do you do you think that we can differentiate
between like panic fear mongering that's meant to demonize people
and genuine fighting of injustice.
Speaker 4 (51:13):
Well, it's interested that you say due process just going
to pull this pause threat a little more. But that's
what due process is is a pause. Right, You're not
going to just execute a person. They're going to have
a trial, et cetera, et cetera. That's what checks and
balances are. Their pause so you don't actually get to
make this decision. You know, executive branch, we're going to
(51:36):
have a say, and it's going to be this process
and everything takes forever, and there's a lot of red
tape and bureaucracy gets demonized by autocratic factions. I think
because they're trying to mitigate the pause. I don't know
if that answer your question, but what kind of like
if we.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Are genuinely interested in truth, then investigation should be encouraged,
and it is discouraged when it is a party that
is only seeking power. And I think for folks who
are interested in upholding justice and fighting oppression authentically. Like
seeking truth and seeking it from multiple sources and not
(52:17):
just one is the goal because truth is how you
understand what happened and how to not recreate that.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Does this make any sense? I'm lost, but I think
you're not. Well.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
It just gets so complicated because then that exact advice
gets co opted. I mean, think about QAnon talking about
do the research.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Well, sure, but they want you to do the research
from their one guy with a blog, which is different
from myriad external reliable sources. But that is a whole
other conversation because the meaning of a reliable source has
become completely meaningless, right.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
But there is such a thing.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
And like one of the things we talk about a
lot as well is just the importance of having a
variety of sources. And like, even if you have a
variety of sources, it's still possible for them to all
becoming kind of from the same place and from the
same thinking patterns. So the idea is to diversify not
just in your community, but beyond your community. But it's
(53:22):
easier said than done in the algorithms that we are
currently locked into.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Algorithms are part of the problem for sure.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Yeah, I describe the algorithms as cult leaders, yes, y yeah,
because they the goal is to entrap us, right. They
do that by isolating us from our real life communities,
which they achieve by feeding us extreme content because it
has higher chances of engagement, and by love bombing us
with likes and bells and notifications and things. They spread disinformation,
(53:53):
which literally mitigates our ability to control what we do
and don't believe. And the whole point is to extract money,
to make money off of us, right, right, by taking
our attention for their advertisers and our data. Of course,
I think they're the most successful cult leaders ever.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Oh my god, that is so true.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yes, yeah, we've said it a million times, so sorry
for repeating ourselves all the time, old listeners. But like,
I think some people have this idea that the information
is out there, so of course you can just find it.
But the reality is we are I'm in such a
different bubble of social media than some of my friends, Like,
we are seeing completely different realities and that is not
(54:34):
our faults. That is the faults of corporations that are
trying to extract money from us.
Speaker 4 (54:39):
Yeah, control your environments another commonality.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yeah, Okay, let's le on something hopeful. Okay, where's the hope?
Speaker 3 (54:50):
So, yes, you mentioned there's some hope in this, and
we'd love to we'd love to get hooked in it.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Feed it to us, yes, soon, feed that to all
of us.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
I think the most radical thing we can do in
our current environment is to care for one another. It
sounds so cliche and and hackneyed, but community and mutual aid.
I think we have to bridge divides because cult like
thinking feeds off of division. Cults feed off of division,
and we are separated now from people who we think
(55:23):
are so different from us, and as you said, reading
multiple news sources, talking to people who have different ideas,
we have to find ways to bridge the divide, and
I think that happens a lot via.
Speaker 1 (55:33):
Community and mutual aid.
Speaker 4 (55:36):
I think we need to bridge the divisions within ourselves,
the so called human spirit divide. As you know, cult
leaders profit off of a divide itself. That's how they
conquer you, right, So I think ultimately bridging divides and
turning toward one another.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
And that's very hard to do on the internet currently.
So this is my new thing is let's get the
fuck off line and try to forge community where we
live and with people that in the past ten years
maybe we wouldn't talk to because we'd be so online.
I feel like learning how to engage with each other
in real life is maybe the most important thing we
(56:15):
have right now, and you just have to make sure
you don't make another cult happen.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Yeah, I have one last question for you, because I
genuinely want to know the answer, because I want to
do it. When you say kind of like fix the
gap in yourself, what does that look like?
Speaker 1 (56:34):
How do I do that? How do we do that?
Speaker 4 (56:38):
A friend of mine once we were at a party and
he said he feels like his body is a wheelchair
that carries his brain around. And I think about that
all the time because I feel a little bit the
same way. I think I've created a hierarchy within myself
of my brain is at the top and my body's
at the bottom. Yeah, And of course that's not true.
(57:00):
And even though I know it's not true, I can't
help but feel that way. And I think the more
I find personally that I can bridge that gap when
I get into my body, which I do through dancing, swimming,
you know, hiking.
Speaker 3 (57:18):
Yeah, it sounds like kill a million birds with one
stone and go for a walk with your friends.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
Yeah, go for a walk with someone ideologically opposed to you.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
It's hard.
Speaker 4 (57:33):
Yeah, Okay, cool, thank you for complaining that. I also
want to add to this list of hope. By the way,
based on our conversation, is the pause. Yeah, I love that.
Lean into the pause, Lean into the pause.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
And the pause for me, like often I'll have sort
of conflicting ideas inside myself, Like even if I'm feeling
connected to my body, there might be like a thought
that I'm fighting or like that's something that's subconscious that
I haven't yet brought to the contra And the pause
can help me name and identify what that inner battle is.
(58:06):
And like, once I bring to the surface, it is
so much less powerful.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
But that's for me. That's what makes me.
Speaker 2 (58:11):
Feel divided is when I have like two you know,
cognitive disiness.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:17):
Well, this is a fascinating book, and this has been
a really great conversation that I've learned a lot from.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
Tell us the name of your book again, and where
people can find it.
Speaker 4 (58:24):
It's called cults like us Why doomsday thinking drives America?
And you can find it. I think anywhere. At this point,
it's still available everywhere, and I do hope people will
be interested in it because I really want to spread awareness,
you know, as cult leaders say, I'm trying to make
the world a better place.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
Amazing, Thank you, thank you so much, Thanks guys. Okay,
that concludes our interview with the amazing Jane Borden.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Yeah, and I think it's worth noting that the last
chapter of this book is about love has won a Carlson,
and we did do an interview with her daughter, Mattie Stroud,
So give that.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
One a listen for sure.
Speaker 2 (59:05):
And now is the part of the episode where I
ask Megan if she would join this cult.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
Megan, would you join this cult of the Puritans? Absolutely not,
there is no way. Number one, I'm not sailing across
the ocean.
Speaker 4 (59:20):
No.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
Number two. In general, you're just you know, in general.
Speaker 3 (59:23):
Now, sure, if it's like a great cruise ship or something, Okay,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
Cruise trips are fun as well, just letting you know
I'm not on the Mayflower. Do you get it?
Speaker 3 (59:33):
Like?
Speaker 1 (59:33):
No? Oh, I think I would have been like adventure.
Speaker 3 (59:38):
No. And I don't think I would have left the
Catholic Church like they had pageantry.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
They had ritual beautiful iconograph. Yeah, just like weren't there
even wigs at some point? Like I'm not leaving that.
I don't know if that was a Catholic thing ro
which is an air thing? Ok? Cool? Sure?
Speaker 3 (59:56):
And then you want me to wear like wooden shoes
and massive choose its No.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Okay, she's a no on Puritans. Absolutely not. Yeah. I
think it's a tough it's a tough one to swallow.
It's a tough one. I don't think. I don't think
I'm becoming a.
Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Puritan, no, no, yeah, yeah, but you know it is.
It is really interesting to think about the roots of
America and how we became what we are today and
how it's evolved. And there's so many more episodes I
want to do on this like kind of stuff. Even
just thinking about manifest destiny, Like do you remember learning
about manifest destiny? Again, these are concepts I haven't thought
(01:00:33):
about since I was a child.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But it's like, you know, the belief.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
That like we're chosen and special and we deserve to
have this land and those other people are evil, Like.
Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
It's all very culty. Yeah from the beginning. Yeah, so
I wouldn't join the Puritans. But there's so many groups
that I would join, and we're going to get into
a lot of them with our conversations together.
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
So uh. On that note, stay tuned, stay two owned,
write us five stars, do whatever you want, and remember
to follow your gut, watch out for d flats, and
never ever trust me. Bye.
Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
This has been an exactly right production hosted by.
Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Me Lola Blanc and Me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer
is g.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Holly. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.
Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.
Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark
and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me coult podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation,
Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts
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