He escaped a cult

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Jamie's Club. Today's episode. Look, I might
be risking it being a little bitheavy, but I'm going to roll the
dice on that and take the risk. The bloke I'm talking to today is
a really interesting fellow. Now.His name is Scott Holman, and he
has just made a documentary. It'scalled witness Underground. Now. He describes

(00:30):
this as a documentary about artists escapingcults. Now, he says that he
escaped a cult. And the cultthat he escaped is an organization that I'd
never previously considered to be cultish inany way, and I certainly would have

(00:50):
never thought that they would be describedas a cult. But Scott goes into
his reasons for why he describes themas a cult. And it's an interesting
story regardless. And you know,I'll give it away now, Okay,
it's the Jehovah's Witnesses. That's whohe says is the cult that he escaped
from. So it's a really interestingstory. And aside from that story and

(01:12):
making the documentary on it, Scott'salso got a lot of thoughts. He's
a really deep thinker, a lotof thoughts on the nature of consciousness,
and he's even had an interaction withwhat he thinks could well have been a
demon. I'm going to get thatstory out of him for sure. And

(01:32):
also I'll ask him about things likealiens. Why not. I just like
to throw that in there because Ijust want to know what he thinks and
after life. And also I guesswhere does he land on religion once he
leaves his religion? Does he believethat there's a God? Now? Does
he believe there's nothing? Is hesour to the whole thing? We'll find

(01:53):
out. This is Scott Holman,and if you want to find out more
about his documentary and perhaps watch it, go to witness underground dot com.
Scott and I start talking about whathe was doing as a Jehovah's witness and
how he ended up doing that inEcuador. Like the very last act as
a Jehovah's witness that I did wasI went to Ecuador thinking that like,

(02:17):
well, they have like a listof six things you're allowed to do in
that religion that are like a careerchoice essentially, like you can become an
elder. You can you can becomelike the path to the elder is a
ministerial servant, and then there's likeeventually you can become like a deacon,
but it's their version of that.They call it a disc circuit overse here,
and then a district overseer, andthen eventually you're in the higher like

(02:38):
the head world headquarters, and there'slike a whole multiple paths. You can
do one of those paths. Theonly one that sounded good to me,
ever, was going international and preaching. And it wasn't so much I wanted
to preach or I thought the missionwas so calling me. It was more
like, if I have to choosefrom these six, the one that has
an adventure in another country sounds great. But if I don't have choose from
these six, I have like twentyother things I want to do with my

(03:00):
life that are not They are notthis thing. But I was like,
I'm going to try it out,and I kept I started meeting people that
were international preachers, had gone toDominican Republic and had gone to other countries.
In Ecuador was one of those.And that person I met from I
was preaching, a ecros American guy. He's like, yeah, come down,
it's awesome, Like we live inthis little fishing village, and there's

(03:23):
a really cool, like secret surfspot and you can come and hang out
and I'll put you up for freefor your first month or whatever. I
was like, that's an awesome offer. Like I had no money to deal.
I was like, I'm going togo to the other side of another
continent and serve the true God ofthe universe by going surfing a lot.
Oh man, I did that?Signed me up. Yeah, it's pretty

(03:45):
cool actually, And I mean theywere genuinely good people, and they were
really fun, and they were veryadventurous and very open minded despite the culture
being like pretty closed, Like thatwas a really unique and interesting group of
human beings. And I learned howto surf and I serve pretty crazy waves
and I got pummeled by mother Natureand it was but it was awesome in
that sense. Like I probably surf, like I don't know, probably surf

(04:08):
more than I preached, which Ithink I prefer that part of my history.
I never really thought about it thatway. Like if I'm gonna make
a like how many hours did Imark down for God this month, Well,
I think I got more surfing inthat month, right, Yeah,
yeah, you'd be concerned. Howhow meticulously. God's checking your time sheet
just to make sure they have anactual time sheet. You have to turn

(04:31):
it in or you get harrassed bythe elder. It's every single month.
Yeah uh yeah yeah. And whatis it, like how many hours a
week we talked in the ten It'slike the average, like at the bottom
rung of society in that culture isten or eleven. Yeah. Wait,
ten is like bare minimum per montha month. It's like, oh,
a couple hours a week, butyou're like regularly doing it to keep up

(04:53):
your time. And it's like,well, when are we going to get
those hours? And we have togo after church, or well, let's
take all of Saturday and we'll doinstead of going just the two hours like
everyone else, let's do like fivebecause we're out already already dressed up.
Let's just like keep it going andwe'll get half of our month's thing and
one Saturday. We'll do two Saturdaysa month thirt you know something like that.
Yeah, And then there's big pushesevery year to do like a big

(05:14):
campaign. It's like a two pagepamphlet that's like this is really the end
of the world, and there's likelightning and like something about how we have
to like God's gonna kill the gayeor something, and we have to make
sure everyone in the world hears thismessage. So we're gonna go fifty hours
a month, every single person.And that was like once a year thing.
Oh yeah, so you ended upin Equador? Wait where did would
you? Where were you? Wherewere you born? Scott? Where did

(05:35):
you grow up? I'm from northernWisconsin, originally torn and raised there.
And will you were you born intothe Johavast Witness religion? I wasn't in
my family. It's gonna be aunquepart of my story that ended up giving
me. We'll probably get into it. So just like dive in for a
second. My dad or my mydad's dad and his mom, so my

(05:56):
grandparents and my dad's joined the religionin their retire in their fifties sixties,
and I hadn't really met them.I maybe met them when I was a
baby or something, but like,I didn't know my grandparents because they lived
on the other side of the continentand they were all wrapped up in their
retirement and enjoying their freedom and nothaving kids around, and they found this
religion living somewhere else. And Ithink that was like I was like,

(06:18):
oh cool. It was like weneed to make friends in this new place,
and they've met the Jehovah's witnesses ina vulnerable situation like we're new here,
and they're like, cool, wegot you, like come to our
church. And then that influenced them, and then they overtime influenced My dad
and my mom like grew up Lutheran, but like my dad grew up Baptist
with those grandparents, my mom grewup Lutheran with her parents. And but

(06:41):
it's like a very Protestant place,like very Germany, like in Wisconsin,
very German, Czech Polish, likea little bit of everything, but mostly
not Catholic, and with everyone's likepretty casual about their religion, like casual
about their church going where I'm from. So my mom was just like so
like another church with similar beliefs isfine whatever, like let's raise kids in

(07:04):
a safe place. So like theyjoined, but she was always like that's
not really for me. She neverwent preaching, she never got baptized,
She never like she wouldn't like raiseher hand to participate in the weekly meetings.
There's like five a week and soShe was always like the you don't
have to do all the things thatthey say, you don't have to participate,

(07:25):
like you can you can do ityour own way. Look at follow
my example kind of like a littlebit of a voice of reason. And
my dad was like, well,I think we need to take this more
seriously. And they're trying to raisefive kids, so and I think for
them it was like they found otherfamilies with young kids that were about the
same age as them, who hadkids young, and they're like, Oh,
we can hang out with them andwe know there's not going to be

(07:46):
any drug use, and like they'regoing to have their kids and our kids
will hang out and it will belike a pretty safe environment was their general
idea, I think. And theysaid things like that. So I wasn't
raised in it, but I wasn'tborn in it. But I was raised
in it, but I had thislike softer experience with it because my mom
never really got into it and mydad was really not good at it.

(08:11):
So but then when you're a kidgoing to church at the Jehovah's Witness Hole,
are you is it? Is itfun at the other kids cool?
Are you doing fun? Good stuff? No? No, no, no.
I mean it's easily the most boringand not fun part of the week
in all regards. It's it's likethey call it like a classroom setting.

(08:33):
So they think that basically have ahuge superiority complex, like we're better than
Catholics for these twenty seven reasons,we're better than the Pentecostals for these other
reasons, and we're better than theLutherans for these and they're just like pointing
fingers and like we're so much better, and but you're sort of just like
the program is basically this, Okay, we're gonna read a paragraph. We're

(08:54):
gonna have like a leader, likea minister on stage, and then he
has like a minister's helper reading aparagraph and like five sentences, and he
is a microphone. Everyone's a microphone, and then people are Then then there's
like another sentence that's a question atthe end of each paragraph, and it's
well, what is it that Godwants you to do when it comes to
and then fill in the blank topicand then the answer is like sentence three.

(09:18):
But like they're like, don't justread the sentence, brothers and sisters,
why don't you try putting that answerinto your own words. But it's
like, you know, you didn'treally give us any information. It's like
very obvious you want us to answerin this particular way, with this particular
perspective, and that serves the communityor serves the religion in some way.
That basically it's an obedience one onone class, like if you didn't quite

(09:43):
understand, we want you to justobey, and you just do that and
repeat every single week for five meetings, and it's there's nothing unique or special
about it. And the only actof individuality that you might have at church
is that you might get to beassigned one of the five minute talks or
if you really want to rise upten fifteen minute talks speeches where you regurgitate

(10:03):
similar information in a very similar formatand everyone else does either. Either you're
giving delivering a lecture to them that'svery much from the book, this is
what the religion wants us to believe, and everyone has to just agree,
or it's a question answer format,which is like if you didn't already get
it, we want you to justobey. Yes, it's kind of the

(10:24):
format and it sucks, and likeI think, I like I would like
just look up at the ceiling.It was like a pattern and just like
wait for it to get interesting andlike have like a psychedelic experience. I'm
like, I'm so bored. I'mlike watching the ceiling tiles. Now,
this sucks. Why are we doingthis every week? It's terrible. I

(10:45):
don't believe what they're saying, andI would like I kind of follow my
mom's lead, and I was veryskeptical. I was like, they're not
really giving us any information that's new. They're just telling us what they want
us to believe. But if wesay we disagree with it, or if
we like to put our own twistson it, then it's a problem.
And then they'll come and talk toyou about how you're not you're not really

(11:05):
following. You need to follow.You need to be a sheep, be
more like sheep's sheep. Like theyliterally say that, like, we don't
want to be like a independent youcan't have independent thinking. It's like a
big thing they like to say everyyear, make a big splash about how
independent thinking is the path to satan. I don't think it's terrible. No,

(11:28):
I didn't enjoy it. One thingI did like about it was like
after it was over. The otherpeople that were there were genuinely good people,
and a few of them I liked, and I would hang out with
them and have a chat and itwas nice to say hi to them,
and a few of them I verymuch disliked, and a few of them
I didn't respect at all because Ifelt that they were very unintelligent and it
was very obvious. And people havetheir problems, and it's a really weird

(11:50):
cross section of society. All whohave no career, all of who have
no education. Basically everyone's put aside all of their most of their hobby
to spend all of their free timeserving this religion because they all think it's
the path to God. And theonly conversations you can really have are like
what'd you see the bad news thathappened on the news? Like, yeah,

(12:13):
totally saw that. And then they'relike, well, can't wait,
you know, wait and tell Jehovahit fixes everything. It's gonna be awesome.
Like okay, so we just waiteduntil we die and then it gets
better. Isn't really a good sell, but most religions might sell it that
way. But like everything's awesome whenyou die, you get the payoff thin
for everything you're doing now and fastforward to now you've you've made this,

(12:37):
this documentary Witness Underground, and inthis okay, I could instead of me
trying to try to butcher it,how would you explain the documentary? What's
the what's the short version of theelevator pitch? The blurb artists Escaping cults?

(12:58):
Right the documentary, but art It'sEscaping cults is the shortest version.
The dive in would be there's It'sa three chapter film, and it does
some things that I've never seen donein a film on this religion. Maybe
there's something similar on other religions,but I have not seen it yet or
heard of it. Basically, wehumanize the cult lived experience. Usually,

(13:20):
when cults are shown in a filmor documentary, they're shown in a way
that makes them very, very strangeand other, and so the audience is
instantly like, well, I'm notone of them, and I would never
be one of them. How crazyare they or how stupid must they be?
I pity them, poor poor souls, And so I want to do

(13:43):
something different where we show the cultfrom the inside. And I was able
to do that because I've met thiscommunity of artists who were inside the religion,
and they had made an entire excuseme, they made an entire music
scene that was sort of it's youwould think of it as an awful limits
kind of thing, but they developedit was like three five hundred kids over

(14:09):
the period of seventeen years, overalmost like two generations of people making music
and art within the Jehovah's Witnesses,to the point that they had an entire
record label and put out with thirtyalbums and made a bunch of short films
and a couple feature length films anda bunch of trailers to films that didn't
exist in a lot of music videosto celebrate their music, and it was
just like a fun, vibrant placewhere it was sort of like, hey,

(14:30):
the world's ending, and like gettinga record label deal isn't really going
to serve us because the world's anywaysand all these people are going to die.
What if we made our own recordlabel and like we have our own
audience, Like let's just keep onmaking cool art for like our people.
And it became this whole thing.So I'm able to like show in the
film through their art what their lifewere like, and we get those same

(14:54):
people to then tell part of thestory with that little bit of film.
So that's like the opening. Andthen the thing that I really wanted to
dive into a lot of films iscover this topic, and we did it
a little bit differently. Would isshow some of those people as they those
five people that we cover leaving religionfor their various reasons, and what happens
during that the losses of innocence,of community, of friendships, of family,

(15:18):
of people lost in death, andlike, how are these people that
are shunned and ostracized from society,like Joseen is a complete cutoff? They
do completely cut off what they areshunning, like you never will talk to
your family again for the rest ofyour life. And that's it. No,
there's no more to that. Thereare there are loopholes where those people

(15:41):
in their religion can talk to you, but they've they do this other thing
on the inside where they like,I'm really diving in, where they like
really destroy your character so that theycan feel good about what they're doing to
you, treating you this way,shunning you, not talking to you,
like they have to somehow come toterms with that and make it make sense.

(16:02):
So they destroy your character in thatcommunity and this they won't reach out
to you until they won't even tellyou that like someone's sick, that you
you know your dad's sick. They'llsay, like, your dad died,
bye, Like I've delivered the messagethat's like you would you like to talk
to your dad before he dies.We would like to invite you to like
have your last moments. Nothing sweetlike that. It's almost always they're dead

(16:26):
and don't ever call me. It'sreally really harsh. That's a general norm.
But so that's that's usually like whenmost films on the topic end is
like, oh my god, wefeel pity for this person and that they
cried on camera, And then itfeels for me as a viewer like from
having lived something like this, likevery exploitative of that person's emotions because it

(16:52):
ends there. But there's this amazingthing like that decision to leave the religion
or that experience of it happening toyou whether you choose it or not,
is this amazing liberation. It's likethat's the time. Most people never get
to have that kind of experience intheir life where you're like, I'm choosing
this despite all of the risks thatcome with it, despite all the losses.

(17:15):
It's almost like a you can bea refugee from a tragic situation,
or you can choose to live inanother country because you want to and make
a whole new life. But it'sreally just like a mental switch, like
you are in another country whether youchoose it or not. It's like you
can choose if you're in a badsituation. You left a bad situation to
think of it in a different way, like there's an opportunity to make an
awesome life. And I'm sure it'snot always easy for refugee. I'm not

(17:37):
trying to speak for refugees, butthat idea of like getting thrust out into
society where you know nothing, youknow no one, and you have no
support system at all, and everyonethat ever said that they loved you is
actually treating you with this hatred throughshunning. It's an emotional abuse tactic to
control you. They want you tocome back, is what they say.

(17:59):
They want to happen by treating youterribly forever. It doesn't usually work very
very people people go back anyway.So I want to show one more thing
in the film, and the third, the last chapter is like, well,
what did people do with their freedomthat they got? What did they
do with this lives that they had? And the cool thing about doing with
musicians is that they went and madeamazing art right on the heels of getting

(18:25):
out of that situation. They hada lot of things to say, and
they had spent the ten thousand hoursalready in the religion making art and music
to the point that they were atsuch a high level as artists because there
weren't really any other things to do. Really, it's like preach, and
they made music without any other options, no school, like, no outside
friends, no like sports, extracurricularactivities with others. Like their extracurricular activity

(18:47):
was making music for decades or onedecade or so each and so when they
left, they were like, oh, that's that's so fucked up, Like
that's so terrible. We're going togo make an album about it and then
tour with that in the normal society. So then they made these like exit
albums, like multiple albums of likethey're leaving their religion experience, the landing

(19:08):
on the outside of experience and likehaving a voice and saying like what is
their life philosophy on the outside islike really empowering stuff lyrically, and like
they're incredible musicians on top of it, and multiple different genres like psyche rock,
indie rock, a little bit ofpunk influence, post punk, all
kinds of stuff, really interesting stuff, and especially this community. And so
finding them in like thirty plus ofproduced albums from in their religion, plus

(19:32):
like seventeen more on the outside waslike, oh, wow, you guys
are just giving me all that tomake a movie. That's incredible, and
their interviews were really really solid,and so we get to see this like
breath of fresh air on the outsideof like, oh, it's not just
a tragic story that you were suckedinto a cult and then you like are
dealing with the broken pieces. Onthe outside, it's like, oh,
they took those broken pieces and madesomething amazing out of it and they went
and lived whole lives after and it'slike you get to see what that's like

(19:56):
on someone. So is it thethe emotional journey? Ah, But it's
like everything, everything's great at thestart. Here we are and we're enjoying
our church life, and then thingstake a dock turn. Then they leave,
then it's the horrible time and thenyou're getting it back up to the
top of that happiness at the end. Is that is that the kind of
rollercoaster that you're going to take theemotions on exactly? And it's it's interesting

(20:21):
because like most documentaries, I mean, some documentaries get emotional. There's obviously
emotional topics and docs, but peopleregularly tell me they've they've watched this film
like three times and they cried ita different part every single time, and
they didn't realize. I mean,it's triggering to people that went through it
on very clear levels, but likethey really value its like handled it with

(20:41):
such care. But yeah, thatis the emotional arc, and it's a
pretty pretty intense emotional arc, andI think it's also really humanizing people that
never went through this really relates.I've had people from other religions relate people
from other cultures who have no interactionslike this, but like like someone living
from another culture moving to my countryand the growing up with like two different
worlds and having to like navigate that, They're like, I totally understand what

(21:04):
that's like, having to navigate twonew worlds. And it was cool to
see that in a movie like thatdoesn't really get captured. It's like,
okay, so people from all overfrom different perspectives really relate to this,
probably because we humanized it. Itwasn't just like, hey, there's some
weirdos that like fell under the spellof some sex cult guru and then we
got to watch the drama. It'slike a very human and very relatable movie.

(21:27):
Yeah, that's the the interesting thingabout it that first, when I
read about what you were doing,I saw it was about a cult,
and I'm like, okay, acult? Okay, is this is this
a Waco, Texas David Koreshtan thing? What is this? And then to
find that you were talking about Jehovah'sWitnesses to describe it as a cult seemed

(21:49):
was it? I guess was anew idea to me. Why would you
describe the Jehovah's witness religion as acult. So the main point of the
film is about shunning, and myexperience with shunning is the fuel that wanted
me to go make a film onthe topic. Because I haven't talked to
my family for seventeen different members forover fifteen years, and at that time

(22:14):
it was like eight years in andI was like, this is this is
terrible what is going on? Andit feels terrible to be cut off from
people that I love and even evenreally we're all victims, the people in
religion and myself, but I feellike they are the real victims because they
have to deal. They have toactually make that choice every single day to
treat me that way, and theyhave to live with that tension andcognitive dissonance.

(22:37):
And I know what that's like becauseI also went and I did that
when I was in it on somelevel to some people, and it doesn't
feel good, but to have todo it to your own family member is
like the harshest. Yeah, Andthe having no dignified way of leaving a
group is what makes for me.There's there's many other reasons why this group

(23:02):
is a cult, by many differentways of looking at it, but that
for me is the strongest one.Is that there's no dignified way to leave,
Like if you if you join likethe golf club or something a golf
course, country club, you canprobably leave and stop paying your dues or
whatever. And it's like, yeah, well, you know, if you
ever want to come back, likewe're still here. It's still a golf

(23:26):
course, and we'd love to haveyou would be like the general response of
most any healthy group, but thisgroup is like, if you leave,
we will destroy your character, assassination. We'll make sure people think that you're
a sex craze maniac and that you'rejust leaving to do drugs, and we
will tell everyone that and we'll probablysay something, you know, and they'll

(23:48):
start doing it. I got messagesfrom people inside the like I know why
you're left, And they made thiswhole speel about none of it was true,
and they just keep on doing that, and they keep on telling themselves
that this has to be true.There's no other reason why this person would
leave. They have to make upstories in their minds that are totally false
even if those things were true.Like, yeah, I wanted to have

(24:11):
sex, so does every human.Yeah, it doesn't mean that I'm crazy
about it. It means I havea healthy sex drive and that's acceptable.
They can't have sex unless you getmarried, and all kinds of crazy stuff
happens because of that restriction. Thatmaybe is worse because then it's like people
are enslaved by entrapped in a marriagethat they was very unhealthy, or people

(24:33):
get abusive, or they feel entitledto sex or something just to go off
on a tangent. Anyway, theydo character assassination and anyway, there's a
lot of lists I think, justto turn people to a valid source that's
really respected. As Stephen Hassan hecreated He's from them. He left the
Moonies. He's a Jewish author inNew York. He's been out of that

(24:56):
religion for like forty years, buthe wrote a very famous book and he
created a model called the byte modelB. It is an acronym and I'm
not going to go into it,but if you want to look up,
like what what are the clear things, clear elements that make a group a
cult? It's all laid out there, and John's businesses fit into it perfectly.

(25:21):
So there's like like Netflix has anew series where there's like how to
Become a Cult Leader, and theygo through like nine cults in the series,
and it's awesome, it's really welldone. But each one of those
is kind of a classic cult.We you have like a single leader,
like you mentioned David Koresh for example. Yeah, single cult leader and they
have their own ideology and there's ahierarchy, and like all the women have
sex with the leader, and likethere's like obvious extreme things that are you

(25:44):
see on repeat through society that workfor some reason, and that person is
you know, God's true savior orsomething. And then of course everyone kills
himselves and it's like wow, yeah, it's classic cult and not all cults
are that. There's other things,and this cult survives like there was.
It was like that in the eighteenhundreds, and then in the nineteen hundreds,
early one hundred, nineteen eighteen,the original cult leader died, much

(26:06):
like the Mormons with their leader.He was killed in the war versus the
United States, and then someone tookover in both cases and then that person
totally transformed what it is what itwas into the religion more like the religions
that we see today with Jehoah's Witnessesand Mormons, and they almost followed a
very similar path. So for youto make this film and to I guess

(26:33):
call out the Jehovah's Witness religion asare you concerned about retribution backlash? Are
you concerned your safety? Originally Iwas concerned more about litigation than safety because
they've they've really loved to boast abouthow they have an incredible team of lawyers.

(26:59):
Some of their lawyers aren't even havewitnesses. But they spend incredible amounts
of millions of dollars on legal feesevery year, and they lose an incredible
amount of legal battles every year,and they win a lot of legal battles
every year, or set a lot, they set a lot of court out
of a lot of legal battles everyyear. Right now, Like they lost
well whatever, I can get intothe details, but they they litigate a

(27:22):
lot. What they haven't litigated against, to my knowledge, are films on
the topic. And most films onthe topic are like the Javas witnesses are
doing this and this, and theyhave pictures of their buildings and pictures of
their logo and pictures of their website, and they call them out directly.
And in this film, we're reallyjust telling a story about people. And

(27:42):
so in terms of like, ifthey're not getting litigated, and those films
exist on the internet, and we'vedone all of our legal and got it
all in a good place, ifthose films can exist and they're directly calling
attention to the abuses of the religion. Then I think we're okay in that
case. But as far as mysafety, I mean, every single year

(28:04):
there's like a mass sort of amass shooting or killing or bombing, like
or no, there's a bombing inKerala, India a month ago at a
Jehovah's Witness convention by a former member, and usually it's by a former member,
so someone like in my position Ino longer am a member who's upset
about how something went down or howthey're being treated taking action, And most

(28:27):
people that leave the religion do nothingabout it and then move on and try
to bury their past. And thenit's some small group like myself are like,
well, I'm going to make somethingmedia about it with a writer or
make a video or do a podcast. There's a lot of that going on,
and I know a lot of thosepeople and they're doing great work and
really interesting stuff. And then there'slike a very very minor group. It's

(28:49):
like one person per year that getskicked out pretty soon after that does a
violent retribution and they kill a bunchof active Jehovah's witnesses. And that's not
condone. I mean, that's there'sno good reason to kill a bunch of
people. Yeah, I'm not goingto advocate for murder on your podcast anti

(29:11):
murder. Okay, that's thanks ofthe type that's but it's understandable why they
do it, because it's like sotragic what they're being dealt with, Like
you can't talk to your kids forthe rest of your life, or they
we're going to turn your kids againstyou, We're going to take them away
in a legal battle, We're goingto you know, all these terrible things

(29:33):
happen, and I mean people inthat religion are barely keeping it together mental
health wise, in all the differentways that mental health problems can exist,
Like that religion is like an abusemachine, and so no one's in anyone
associated with it's not in a goodplace, like there's something happening that's not
healthy, and then to leave itand to be then further abused by like

(29:55):
everyone you've ever met for a lotof cases, like of course, that
pushes people over the edge, Likelosing your parents in a car crash is
tragic, but like imagine them choosingto cut you out of their life forever,
Like that's almost worse than an impersonaldeath. It's like they're choosing to
destroy the relationship. And it's notjust them, it's also your siblings.

(30:17):
It's also your best friend and andand your your active partner in you know,
you could be in your own inyour own relationship, your own kids,
all of them cutting you off atthe same time. And usually people
that are that tied into it,most people that are in it or tied
into it deeply, also have theirjob with someone in it, So they
lose their job, they lose theirapartment. Do you live. You're homeless,

(30:37):
you have no job, and youhave no community, and you don't
know what to do, and you'rebroke, probably because you never got an
education, so you have almost nooptions or you feel like you have zero
options. So that's the typical situationwhen someone gets out. It's not that's
not an extreme situation. That's likethat standard. I was I have the
exceptional thing, and that I wasI actually went to college and I like

(31:00):
navigated and then did some of thethings you're not supposed to do and got
away with it. Yeah, thepicture, it's pretty dark, and like
the murderers are like, it's understandablewhy the people went to that level,
but it's not not condone. Pleasedon't murder anybody. If you're listening to
this, that's good life advice there, Scott. I appreciate that. So

(31:26):
is your your motivation in making thisdocumentary? Is this kind of in a
way, your revenge and your wayof your version of killing a bunch of
people is putting out this documentary whichslams the whole the whole religion. I
mean, as much as you aredoing a wonderful service and giving a voice

(31:48):
to people who don't have one,is there an element of you that wants
revenge and wants them to suffer.Hmm. I haven't used those terms or
framed it quite that way. Isee where you're going there. Yeah.
I think the guiding light for mewas that I when I was in the
Jehovah's Witnesses, like or when myparents were in it, and I was

(32:12):
like doing my best to be apart of it. However you want to
frame that. I watched films onthe religion. I watched Knocking, which
was that's a reference to them knockingon people's doors as a title, and
I think that one had if I'mit might be mixing up, but there
was that one that one I thinkfollowed up person who was getting a blood

(32:32):
transfusion, who is a Jehovah's winness, and then a person who there was
some other problem. They were followingtwo different people, two different things that
are very Jehovah's Witness problems, andthey had watched that one. I watched
tu Verden there, which is aDanish drama on the topic from like nineteen
ninety nine, and I'd gotten thatwith subs. I bought the DVD.

(32:54):
I was like looking for the information. I was buying films and watching these
films. I think the average witnesswouldn't have done that. But on the
flip side, like I was eventalking to the Elders, like in New
Year two thousand, I was like, you know, you can just buy
that Secret Elders Manual on eBay.They're like, what's eBay? I was
like, ah, you Latites,have you heard of the internet yet?

(33:15):
Like it's a real thing and there'slike really interesting you can do anything on
there. And I was this veryearly adopter and everything. But so I
was like, but I was alsolike looking at their early Internet or the
early website for the religion, waslike, have you guys seen on Jehovah's
witness dashmedia dot org, the newnews that came out about it and about
whatever thing in the Joha's Witnesses,and like you shouldn't be using the internet.

(33:37):
That's like Satan's world. I waslike, it's our religion's website,
Like that's impossible. Our religion cannever have web so it must be apostates.
Like they would freak out because,like the religion had been saying for
ten years, the internet is aland of danger. But they had their
own website that their own members didn'tknow about, so it's like a weird
world. But I was watching andpaying attention to all this stuff and open

(33:58):
minded enough to watch films on thetopic, and it was like, well
the film and the Danish film waslike about someone being shunned and having a
girlfriend in high school that they're notsupposed to or a boyfriend high school they're
not supposed to and it being aproblem and then the dad not talking to
them again. And then I waslike, this is totally exactly what it's
like, Like, this isn't badto watch, It's exactly what I'm living.

(34:22):
It's cool there's a movie about exactlymy life is it painting a pretty
picture, No, but it's reallyreally honest. So I had this early
like open mind in this, andI would go and watch a film,
but I wasn't going on the internetand seeing like what do people say about
the Jova's witnesses. That was waytoo I was crossing a line for me.
I wouldn't allow myself to do that. And so when I got out,

(34:43):
I was like, I think Ineed to make a movie about my
experience. And it wasn't just likethe day I got out. It was
like years after, and years afterI'd gone through the the on and off
with family for the first couple ofyears, and then the complete cutoff.
No, it's very much like today'sthe day we're never going to talk to
you again, goodbye, like hotoff. And I thought, after living

(35:07):
with that for a couple of years, I was like this, this is
broken. This is so abusive andunhealthy, and the religion is the source
of it. I'm upset with myparents. I'm set with my siblings for
doing it, but they have todo it. Like if they don't do
that to me and someone finds outin our family or in the congregation that
they're in, that they're actually communicatingwith me. If they did that,

(35:30):
they would be treated like they're treatingme. So it's like it's almost like
this it's a complicated thing. ButI thought if I made a movie that
someone like me in the religion orin a similar religion would probably watch it
and it might affect them like thoseother films affected me for the better,

(35:54):
to help me make a decision aboutmy own freedom and my own self worth.
And so that's my real motivation.Is it revenge? Is it my
my my? My nonviolent activism?I would say it's I would say it's
yeah, maybe more non violent activism. It's like I want I want to

(36:14):
point a big finger at this hugeproblem and frame it as it actually is,
how it actually works, and whatit actually is, as emotional abuse,
and that this religion is not Iwant that people to know that it's
a dangerous organization and it's not justsome place in Minneapolis for the film that
takes place, or someplace in Americaor hapless people on the other side of

(36:37):
the planet. It's in your neighborhood. If you live in a nation where
Christianity exists, this religion is aparasite there and it's people in your neighborhood
that are doing exactly this to theother neighbors in your neighborhood. And you
probably know someone who's been affected byit, but they are not talking about
it because they want to bury thatpart of their past and they're going through
trauma, and it's because of theJehovah's witnesses. It's a very dangerous and

(37:00):
it's an elusive cult, would bemaybe a way to say it, Like
people don't realize as a cult becausetheir propaganda is very, very clear,
like we're good people. We dresslike we're in the nineteen fifties, and
we have the message of Jesus.That's what people generally know. And they
have some oddities about not celebrating holidays. That's about as deep as most people
get. They shut their door onthe pen on the weekends because they're annoying

(37:21):
and they don't really care, andthen I don't know anything else. So
this film, yeah, we touchon those those things, and we dive
really deep into what they really arethrough and humanize them in a way,
but also exposed they're the chaos thatthey cause in the world. I can
see what you mean and how it'sa specific top of trauma to be shunned.

(37:42):
And look, although the the DESMdiagnosed against statistical manual, which is
all of the psychological issues that anyperson can have, Like, religious trauma
isn't in there. But I understandthe view, don't They didn't They don't
still have religious traumas syndrome. Andmaybe complex complex PTSD CPTSD isn't quite in

(38:07):
there yet either, or maybe that'slike the closest equivalent to religious trauma syndrome.
I just reading about that, soI try a book about it,
and you but you would you wouldadvocate for religious traumas syndrome to be in
there. I mean, I'm notqualified enough to know what is in and
what is out, but from everythingI've read and looked into, yes,

(38:30):
it's real. We are suffering andit doesn't go away. It's like like
I had a We just did aKickshutter. So we just did a big
film release, Kickshutter, that endedtwo weeks ago, and we raised the
money to release the film properly onstreaming services. During that time, I
sent many thousands of emails and personalmessages and individual messages out to many people,

(38:53):
including I slipped a couple of thoselittle marketing bits. Check out our
campaign into to some old Facebook groupsthat included that my non Jehovah's Witness family
had set up a decade ago.But I was like, oh, Facebook,
it has made it really easy tojust hit all these buttons and sense
and paste. And one of thoseis these old groups that had like a

(39:15):
bunch of Jehovah's Witness family immediate familyin it that haven't haven't talked to me
for over a decade, and andother members of our extended family. And
then so my little brother, hishis ex divorced him and left the religion
at the same time, and heremarried another woman. And so that woman,

(39:38):
I've actually spoken to her. She'sthe only person in my family.
The only person in my family whowill speak to me is my brother's second
wife, who's also in the religionbut doesn't really know me. But she
wrote this like crazy long message inresponse to me saying, check out this
amazing film I made. It's mylife's work. I want you all to

(40:00):
see it. Here's the link withlike, you know that these people would
have your back. Everyone in yourfamily absolutely loves you, and you know
that if it came down to it, they would give you the shirt off
their back. They show you nothingbut love at all times. And and
it was just going on and onand on the exact opposite of what's real.
And then then the other thing,like calling me out for creating from

(40:25):
scratch a hate group against Jevah's witnesses, like I'm the I'm I'm the one
here suffering from a hate group likeJoe's witnesses. If I'm if we're gonna
like spin the story, you knowis, and we're you're going to use
that language like the opposite is happening, Like I am the hated group from

(40:46):
a group that has created a hategroup for themselves to hate, which is
anyone who doesn't like being treated beingabused by them. And it's like if
you if you say I don't likebeing abused by you, then you then
you get put into the hate groupand you get treated this way. You're
already being shunned, but it's like, well, now we're going to do
an extra level of hatred towards you. It's like to write that message is

(41:07):
like those seventeen paragraphs I did notneed this morning, But okay, I
guess that's like, now you're gonnastart shunning me more than you've already been
shunning me, Like she's talking tome twice. I don't know. Like
that's why. One of the reasonsI made the movie was like, I
have absolutely nothing to lose, andwhen it comes to family relationships, the

(41:28):
entire point of making it is inreaction to losing all my family relationships to
cult mind control. And they haveto do this or they will suffer by
their in their own social situations rightnow. And they think they believe they're
going to suffer not getting into paradise, and so they truly believe that talking

(41:50):
to me will get their opportunity togo to heaven, their version of heaven
forever from talking to their loved family. They love to you. They really
use the word love a lot whenthey're doing the shunning. In my family's
case, I don't know why.Anytime there is any interaction, it's like
we love you, never call usplease, you suck goodbye forever. It's

(42:14):
like, I'm pretty sure that loveis not the correct verb here if that's
what your goal is. Are youstill or were you ever a religious person?
Do you have do you have afight, do you believe that there
is a higher power. I livedwith their God from a young age,

(42:36):
from like six seven years old.I don't know my parents ever believed before
that, and I still don't evenknow what they believe now, because the
only thing they've ever said to mefor twenty five years is that they believe
what the jobas Witnesses say to believe. So I just they just tell me
that they believe what the Watchtower magazinesays about God. As far as like
me having a relationship with God.The one thing that they love to talk

(43:00):
about is praying. They pray everyday, and I did that act,
which ultimately is like I don't know, it's formulaic, like you have to
say these kinds of things, youcan ask for these kinds of things.
God might answer your prayers, butprobably not, like they care more about
demons than God usually, Like it'slike the demons are everywhere in that religion.

(43:22):
But as far as like having aGod to pray to, yeah,
I did that. I never gotany kind of like obvious answer or even
subtle answers to anything. I thinkI was more questions were raised than anything.
One thing that religion does really goodreally well, they're like a machine
for this. Besides, abuse ispointing out why all the other religions are

(43:45):
illogical or incorrect, or their practicesand rituals are wrong or unbiblical or unscriptural,
and how much better and more superiorthey are in their pure form of
Christianity. And so when you spendtwenty years hearing that Catholics are pure evil
and they've been and here's all thethings that they've done wrong for the last

(44:07):
seventeen hundred years, and what they'vedone, you know, recently with the
Nazis, and what they've done withyoung boys in choir and through the up
through the nineties until today, etcetera. And then how you know,
Lutheran's this, and Pentecostals that,and et cetera, et cetera, whatever

(44:28):
fill in the blank, whatever negativething other religions are wrong. Johsephness Is
are awesome and better at everything intheir minds. Hearing that my whole life
and then finally realizing that what Iwas a part of was not true or
that it like they're lying or misleadingor manipulative, and I, you know,

(44:49):
and I finally walked away. Iwas like, oh, oh the
God that I've been praying to fromfrom the perspective of them, all those
other religions have their own God,their own separate entity of a false God,
and so to like part like mostI think most religious people think of
there being a God and everyone's tryingto worship that same thing and talking to

(45:14):
that same being, but they mightbe doing in a different way. But
the Joha's menace is like, no, everyone's doing it wrong, and they're
talking to a different god, completelyseparate entity, and they believe in these
other gods as like false gods orjust like their non existent like fake gods
or something. It's like a it'sa complex thing, but like when you
have that influence and then you walkaway from it, it's like, oh,

(45:37):
so I just was pointing a lensat those like three hundred different gods
this whole time, making fun ofthem and talking down and being negative and
having superiority complex about how my God'sbetter than yours. That pointing that same
lens at that same God that Igrew up with made him disappear like he
wasn't real either, And so whenI walked away, I was like,

(45:59):
oh, all odds are false andthere aren't any and everyone, not everyone,
but a lot of people that Iknow that have left this particular religion
had that experience independently because you can'treally, no one's really talking to other
ex witnesses on the outside until likesomeone does research on the internet. It's
like, oh, I found somebody. It's like a rare experience and meet
another X witness. Like most people, when you finally talk about the story,

(46:20):
when you meet somebody, it's likemeeting First of all, it's like
meeting like of the war veteran orsomething like, oh yeah, you went
through that too, let's talk aboutit out. Let you go out for
coffee, you have a beer,and it's like you've spent for seven hours
talking about everything. I love that, by the way, it's awesome.
Yeah, that's why I keep makingstuff on the topic. But when I
finally, like most people that leave, have the experience of like, oh

(46:42):
yeah, I realized that it wasall bullshit, like there are no gods,
there is nothing, there's just materialistatheism. But then of course over
time that's like that's like clean slight, like okay, so all every religious
group was nefarious and manipulative and badideas. Josmans are really good at pointing
that out. Okay, now Iknow that they all do the same thing,
or they're worst, they're like theworst culprit of that. Okay.

(47:04):
So I was duped fine, orI was like partially duped, or I
was like wrapped up in it andI couldn't see that. I was like
confused. So but after time,like I am curious about things, but
I if you want to know,you want to my personal So yeah,
for sure, what's what's what's yourpersonal view on it? What's your personal
relationship with with with God if thereis one? So the closest thing,

(47:27):
Okay. So when I was Ilived in Asia. I lived in Vietnam
for five years and I started Ilearned from this master whom he's basically teaching
Buddhist stillness meditation and like an introcourse in his up like top of his
building studio and it's basically it's likea meditation studio. And that was my
first introduction to like meditation in general. And over time I started practicing on

(47:52):
my own doing that. And whatI found one person is it calls himself
a new atheist, Sam Harris,And have heard of Sam Harris a pretty
famous atheist, not familiar with thename not he's a neuroscientist, biologist I
think maybe as well. But hehas an app called Waking Up app and
it's in I mean that term Idon't even like. But I don't think

(48:15):
there's a waking up moment. Ihad one, but I feel like it's
like there's an onion, like there'sa lot of things to wake up from
forever and ever end. But hisapp was interesting because he's he's basically a
materialist atheist, but he is avery deep interest in Eastern thought, and
so he's kind of been dubbed thespiritual atheist because he dives into all these
things that are generally considered part ofthe spiritual community, but an atheist generally

(48:38):
are considered like, don't participate inany of that kind of stuff. But
he's like, no, but there'ssomething valuable here because there's nothing about God,
there are no angels or spirits.If you're doing meditation, you're kind
of getting to know your subconscious Sowhat is happening inside of you is what
the practice is all about, andtrying to understand reality from the subjective lens
that we have but at least youhave we have this, we have one

(49:00):
point of view, and let's gofigure out what's happening here inside from within,
Like what what are the sensations thatare happening right now, let's just
observe them, And what is thismental chatter that's happening all the time?
Are those my thoughts are the external? Like what is my subconscious really saying?
What am I telling my subconscious andthen it's repeating to me later in

(49:22):
this chatter and like that kind ofI've doven into that, and I really
appreciate his perspective on it because he'snot bringing anything from another faith group into
it. It's just about the practice. He's like he's almost like a purist
in that sense, and that's beenreally refreshing. I've kind of like a
like, I'm repelled by the spiritualcommunity and I'm repelled by spiritual ideas,

(49:46):
but I'm very open minded as faras like joining something or like saying I
adhere to this. But I'm veryopen minded. And I might not sound
like that from that those couple ofsenses, but I'm open to hearing people
have to say and discussing it atlength and I'm just not going to necessarily
say I agree with you or believewhat you believe, but I want to
know what people have to say.And I think it's fascinating that we all

(50:06):
can have hundreds of difference of perspectiveson what's real and what's not. And
maybe the closest thing I have tospirituality that's been important to me has been
connecting with nature in maybe a pureform of like like, I don't think
there's an afterlife, but if thereis, it's probably something to do with

(50:27):
our consciousness and the subconscious conscious world. Like every biologist and philosopher and physicists
or neuroscientists from trying to find outwhat this thing is that we consider our
own self in our consciousness, andno one knows where it comes from,
where it is, where it's located, where it's how it exists, what

(50:52):
it is like. It's like aninvisible, amazing thing that no one has
a clue what it is. Andwhen I've used some very moderate amounts of
psychedelics and being in nature, theoverwhelming feeling was like this is important,
and I feel like I'm connected toother living beings on the planet in a

(51:17):
way that's profound, like there's communicationhappening, and maybe that consciousness isn't just
in our one species, but isa part of the experience of life and
other living creatures and beings like plants, animals, fungus, insects might actually
be tapping into this same thing,or we're all emanating it or creating it

(51:40):
as a as we're alive. ButI'm not sure that like living, I
don't know that thing. I don'tthink that thing lives on after we die.
Maybe we impart knowledge to it,or it gives us information that it's
hard to like quantify whether that's usor it's from something else. So like,
I feel like that thing that Iwas experiencing, especially not my It's

(52:05):
not like I only experience that whenI'm using mushrooms, but like I've only
used mushrooms like a small amount oftimes, not a huge an addict or
anything to the psychedelic experience. ButI feel like you can have those experiences
without that chemical, but that chemicalsare a shortcut to getting it. You
can have that experience meditating, youcan have that experience just being in nature
and being dead sober. But Ifelt like it like shortcuted and made me
aware of something I hadn't been before, and I value that a lot.

(52:28):
I don't even use very often,but like once a year or something.
And yeah, so I feel likethat whole thing I just described might be
the origin of faith in religion,or not faith but fit the origin of
spirituality or like a spiritual concept thatpeople have then gone and cut up and
divided into things that are the tribaland identify with their community or their societies

(52:52):
and tap like kind of seeing itfrom a completely clean slate that there are
no gods. But I'm experiencing this. What is this? I'm listening to
this mental chatter? I don't thinkthat's me, Like, I don't know
what that. Where are these ideascoming from? You know that kind of

(53:13):
It's like what is consciousness then?And I don't think any religion has nailed
that. And I don't think it'sGod, the concept of God that I
was raised with, or the universe. But I think maybe physicists nailed it
the best and saying I'm not surewho was saying in or someone else,
but that like we are, weare the self aware part of the universe

(53:34):
looking at itself and wondering something likethat. Yeah, So do you do
you believe that there is a universalor shared consciousness? Yeah, I think
there might be among the living andmaybe like since if we go back in
evolution. That was one of mybig things. One of the reasons I
left the religion was like researching evolutionand unraveling my worldview. But what I've

(53:59):
learned over the decade and a halfis because I still read this kind of
stuff, I love it is.There was the Precambrian explosion, which was
basically there's like a couple of bigmoments in history on life on Earth,
there was single cellular life that wouldcopy itself self replicate and make a but
it would clone itself and then thoseclones over time there could be a mistake

(54:21):
and that would be that would bethe moment where like something would be different,
and then that thing with a mistakeor a change in the DNA from
a code copy mistake could be avaluable asset that eventually created something more complex.
That's a very inefficient and over itdoesn't scale very well in terms of
like creating big changes. What changed. What I believe, if I'm getting

(54:44):
this writer's too, is pro carryoutsand you carryouts. I believe eukaryotic life
is where two species are exchanging someportion of DNA and that developed into the
sexual reproductive organs between two of thesame species. But when you change,
you swap half of your DNA strandwith the other and then re add that

(55:04):
to the next. The thing that'sborn out of it is like a copy,
a half copy or fifty percent ishcopy of two different versions of that
species. Now the it's an exponentialscale of complexity, and that's called the
Precambrian explosion is multicellular life. Andthe sex organs change is huge. So
that thing happened, and then notso long after, we have fungus,

(55:28):
the fungal kingdom, and from fungalkingdom everything else developed and fungal kingdom or
like a Paul Stamitz describes it aslike a an inverted stomach digesting a digestor,
and that also has a lung thatbreathes in oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide
like human like animal life, andit has like a something in the brain

(55:51):
I can't roasphyla that's that can likemove out. It's like one of the
fastest beings on the planet, likewhen a cow shits and it hits the
ground, like the fungus has alreadytraveled and traverse every part of the aisle
of poop faster than like a cheetahwould be running across the land, Like
it's crazy how fast it is.And and that that structure is like similar

(56:12):
to our nervous system in some rudimentaryway, and and from that all plants
evolve, and from that all animalshave evolved. And I'm not sure,
probably insects, but I don't know, but I'm not an expert in this
is like the bits of pieces ofthem gathering. But just to think that,
like like we think that we're sospecial and separate from the plant and
animal world or the other life onthe planet, that we're superior, and

(56:36):
that only we think that only wehave consciousness and only we communicate. Obviously
all animals communicate, and many manyme of other animals have tool use.
But consciousness might be like the universalthing that binds us all together, or
maybe is a form of communication that'smaybe we can't really understand it because we're
so wrapped up in whatever we're doingon this planet as humans. Maybe if

(57:00):
we're more connected to nature would bemore tapped into whatever that thing is.
That's like where my mind goes whenit comes to spirituality, Like we're connected
to something greater, but maybe thatgreater thing that we think is the universe
or God is actually just the amazingcomplex ecosystem that we're all a part of.
We try to separate ourselves from andbe superior to, but like we
should actually get more into it andbe more connected to it. I think

(57:21):
when you talk about fungus that that, yeah, that is really interesting because
the largest living entity on Earth isactually a fungus somewhere. I remember reading
about it. It's uh miles,Yeah, you can see it from space,
yeah, right, like it's environmentfrom space that its body creates.
Yeah. And then when you seethere's a TV series called The Last of

(57:45):
Us made from a video game,and that's when fungus guys militant and guys
rya right humanity. You're done.It's such a good series, very very
cool. Zombies but from a fungalfungal infection and zombies have changed. Okay,
I love a tangent. I loveI love zombie films. Right,

(58:06):
it's in the in the super earlydays, it was about a curse and
it was witchcraft and that's what madezombies. And then we kind of went
into more like scientific and it becamea virus. Yeah, and then the
fungus thing, it's very it's verycool and it's it's it's such a great
idea. And then on that,would you believe that there's life outside of

(58:28):
Earth? Is the extraterrextraal life andis it intelligent necessarily? So one of
my big passions since as a teenagerjobs when I supposed to read physics books
like physics for the layman, tryingto understand string theory and supersymmetry and like
what is the base rudimentary elements ofthe universe? I love that kind of
stuff And one of the big questionsthat always comes up, like the philosophy

(58:51):
of physics, is like, well, if we're here and we understand the
base rudimentary elements of the universe,and like maybe there's other places. I
mean, it's vast, like theimmensity of it, just the numbers,
the sheer size of what we canobserve. The human brain can't really fathom,

(59:12):
and people try to do it withlike math to try to give some
sense of scale. To what we'retalking about. But like now now the
topic is like it's already gigantic.But if we add black holes and the
new theories that have come out inthe last few years about maybe they're not
that new. The greatest physics happenedone hundred years ago, but the newest

(59:34):
discussions on the topic are that everyblack hole itself is its own universe as
part of the multiverse. At thecore of every galaxy is a black hole,
and just the sheer magnitude of whatthat means, it's probably probably every
single decision that you're making, liketo decide to tap on the laptop,

(59:55):
like the other version, another versionof me and another alternate reality didn't do
that, but that that fractured time, and so now there's another universe where
like two different versions of me didthat, one did, one didn't,
And like that just keeps that happeningwith every single decision we make, and
we make an incredible amount of decisionsevery day. So like there's a version
of you that's made every decision everright now that you've ever made is made

(01:00:20):
like one decided to do this orthat or this or another thing. And
maybe so like that concept is isso insane and the whole, the whole
thing's the whole thing's insane, Likewe're just some fractal in some gigantic tapestry.
I mean, the most interesting peoplein the world to me are like
are saying we're basically just a hologramin some giant machine. That's our experience,

(01:00:46):
something similar to simulation theory, andwho knows, I don't know now
one thing one theory I like.I'm a huge fan of Duncan Trussel.
It's like the craziest podcast I've everheard in my life. He's a comedian
and podcaster. But he introduced anidea to you I'd never heard before,
and since I heard a lot ofother people say some similar things to the

(01:01:07):
idea that like wed weird infinite beinglike a spirit being, just to use
like a religious term. And wechoose or are assigned. We choose to
inhabit or let's see, we chooseto take human form and be the child
of the parents that we had,knowing full well what they were like and

(01:01:29):
probably what they would be like asparents, and we chose that journey.
We chose to have our mind erasedto take on this human life and that
it all just is another cycle thathappens again. Well, we'll go back
to the spirit form and we candecide to do it again or not.
It's like it's the greatest ride inthe universe, Like we just keep on
trying it because it's like so muchfun to take the roller coaster ride something

(01:01:50):
like that. I think it's areally fun concept. I mean it's almost
like everything's cool, Like all thepain you might go through or suffering and
all the good times, it's likeit's just part of a ride. So
then thinking that you don't don't reallybelieve in an afterlaf or anything like that,
have you? So you've never experiencedanything supernatural, anything you can't explain,

(01:02:17):
right, You're just talking about Bigfootearlier today. It's so funny.
My girlfriend she's like that he livesin the Himalayas. I was like,
no, that's a YETI that's likea different species of different Yeah, totally,
it's like there's different species now.Yeah, so that's an interesting question
and yeah, okay your questions.Have I experienced anything unexplainable? And the

(01:02:42):
answer is yes. And it's beenreally challenging to my theism to experience something
that's unexplainable, and I don't thinkit explains God. I just think it
shows that there's like a lot ofthings we just don't know or where our
experience are so subjective and maybe I'mjust reacting, but I can explain.
I can tell you the story ifyou want. Yeah, yeah, I

(01:03:05):
want to hear this for sure,probably the most fun one. There's two
that are still a little bit thatare connected in a way. So I
wake up like I'm living in myparents, buy the neighbor's house, and
it becomes our music studio through highschool. This is how music enters my
world and becomes a big deal,and we have we record an album there
and it's like a whole thing fora year, like five years. But

(01:03:27):
I ended up living there and movedback to my hometown after leaving the religion.
But I kind of came back tothe religion for family staff when I
was nineteen and I lived in thishouse and it was a couple of months
in and I started a new band, and I was saying, in this
house, it's a daily thing,and it's an old it's an old trailer
house. It's like past its expirationdate and there's this. It's I'm on

(01:03:49):
the one end of the trailerhouse andthere's a window, and the windows open
in the summer, and I wakeup and I can't move my body at
all. I can open my eyes, but I can't move any parts of
my body. I've later learned thatthis is called fleet proalysis slight paralysis.
Yeah, and people have very similarexperiences to this, So like, I've
kind of demystified it a little bitfor myself, But this is my experience.

(01:04:12):
Wait, I wake up. WhatI wake up to is so scary
and I question this for years.But basically I hear screaming, but it's
like banshee, like demonic, bloodcurdling screaming, like piercing, like I
play like metal and punk rock atextream volume distortion, like loud. I'm

(01:04:39):
used to loud. This was liketolerance. Yeah, yeah, I have
tolerance for that. I mean this. I mean if I could replicate this
sound in a song, I wouldprobably get like I'd be popular in the
metal world. But this sound islike the scariest thing I've ever heard in
my life, something like horrible,demonic, insane. I had to like

(01:05:00):
a shrill scream of like with afemale voice like super high, just like
unending, and it just kept going, kept going and going and going for
like felt like ten fifteen minutes,and then it just suddenly stopped. But
during that time, I was afraidfor my life, like every part of
my body was on edge, butlike I couldn't move it. I was

(01:05:23):
like scared, like my heart's poundingits peak and there's nothing I could do.
It was the easily the scariest thingI've experienced that was unexplainable. So
I've just lived with that, andit's like I don't I grew up in
like demon world, like Jeff's Wannasays, talk a lot about the demons,
and my older brother used to tellme he always felt like demons were
always watching the windows of the house, and so I always thought about that.

(01:05:46):
And I've had weird experiences where likesome feeling was in the house,
like entered, I like felt something, and my mom and I went through
the entire basement with a baseball batlooking for like some intruder because I felt
an intruder. She's like, whatdo you feel? I don't know.
Let's follow I don't know. Sowe went into the adventure like Scott and
Mom going through the basement and it'slike filled with crazy stuff. You have
to look underneath everything, and itwas like our house. My parents are

(01:06:09):
hoarders, so it's like, howdo you find an intruder in like a
house filled with stuff beyond your wildnessimagination? That took a long time and
I've so like I felt all ofthat in this space and that was scary.
But then it's like, well,who do I tell because it's like
super scary and I don't And likethey always say, like demons they can
hear anything you say, but theydon't know what you're thinking. That's what

(01:06:30):
Joha's in is lore like, sodon't talk about it because that like gives
them a clue that like they gotto you. So you can't talk to
anyone about the demon experiences. Butthen people in the witnesses talk about the
demon experiences all the time. It'slike that's like their only source of faith
is being scared, so they talkabout that, and that's like a whole
tangent we can go on. Butbasically I didn't tell anyone, But then

(01:06:55):
I was in my band and it'slike a month later or a couple of
weeks later, the basis in myband, well, our basis got kicked
out of the religion, so wecouldn't talk to them anymore. I still
tried to, but like he wouldn'ttalk to us. So he had left
the religion. So we had anew bassist and she was coming over and
so her and I hung out.But we can't stay in the same house

(01:07:16):
opposite sex like I had. Iwent inside of my parents' house. I
was like, I was out ofthe house like a year or two at
this point. So I left heralone in that same room, in that
same bed, and I never saidanything about that particular demon experience to her.
And so the next day she comes, he walked across the farm.
What you say, that's plot ofyou to do that. I didn't want

(01:07:40):
to scare her or anything. Yeah, that's fair. So she she walks
across the farm field where we livein the middle of nowhere and comes over
for coffee and breakfast to my parents'house and she's like, you didn't tell
me about the demons. That waslike, what what are you talking about?

(01:08:00):
It's like, I just had thecraziest experience in my whole life.
And I was like, what happened. I didn't say anything. She described
almost exactly what I just told you, in complete detail, like every single
part of that story, which thatgave me chills just hearing that, because
like I wasn't sure if I wasgoing crazy, like I didn't like I
was even at that time stuff awaylike maybe that didn't happen, and I

(01:08:23):
just was like, maybe my brainmade all those sounds, and like maybe
I imagined it, maybe I dreamtit, like it was a really really
scary, very very real dream,but like she woke up in that way,
in that same exact spot, withthose sounds and described it unbelievably the
same way. Later she found abook called The House of Leaves, which
is actually really famous book. She'slike, read this book. That book

(01:08:45):
described that exact scenario, with thoseexact sounds in that same order. I
threw that book across the room whenI read that those couple of paragraphs that
scared the shit on me. Andthen like a month later it happened again
to me, So that for mewas like what the hell is going on
here? And I lived there likethat was my I lived there every day
like I had to, like Ihad to be okay with that being a

(01:09:08):
part of my reality. That andlike that same space I on a nightly
basis, like literally, like myexperience in my memories every night was the
same thing, like scratching on thewalls when I went to bed of the
in the next room, but ofthe wall to my bedroom. But on

(01:09:29):
the other side, like something scratchingon the walls in my house in just
outside the door of my bedroom.I felt like I was like, there's
demons in the house. Okay,that's just part of reality. I accept
that. You accept that. Youdon't. That's that's not a halfmte you
accept. Why aren't you calling likean elda or a priest or sprinkling some

(01:09:51):
holy water around there? What areyou doing to combat this? So jaswitnesses
have a very clear way of handlingdemons. They have like a whole book,
not book, but like they havea whole method. And the method
is this, never buy anything secondhand. Ever, but like where I'm from,
like most people only buy secondhand stufflike half the stuff you own,

(01:10:12):
clothing, lamps, like whatever froma very rural ports include house. Sorry
they make a weird exception about thatone. That's I don't know. I
don't know about that one, butbasically it's items. Basically they say items
run like objects like demons attach themselvesto objects, is one of their sentences.
And the only way to get ridof a demon out of your house

(01:10:34):
is to take the possessed object ortheir it's like their entrance card to your
spaces, to remove that thing fromthe house, and that usually solves it.
So like, you then you're good. Just put all the demonic stuff
outside of your house and you're good. And it could be a song,
it could be a new piece ofmusic, it could be something that like
was cursed by a demon or something. Yeah, so that's like a weird

(01:10:56):
thing. So I was like,well, I don't know. Everything I
own is secondhand, Like I don'teven know where to begin. So it's
fine, Like I'll never figure itout. I'd have to like get rid
of everything I own and figure it. Like I just like it was like
fine, it's fine. As demonslike they exist, they can't they also
say, like they can't hurt you. They can just tempt you to do
bad things, but they're always watchingyou. I was like, okay,
I guess that gives me faith andthe true God like I have demons.

(01:11:17):
They always talk about demons like they'rereal. So cool, I guess I'll
just accept it. So then,now, how do you can in your
mind justify that experience and go,well, I've had like a demonic experience.
If there were demons, then surelythey must be the good side as
well, right, I Mean it'salways beens don't really have a good side.

(01:11:40):
It's like there's some angels that helpGod in heaven, but they're not,
like they don't do anything with humanson earth in their way of seeing
the world. But yeah, Imean from the general Christian view, there
would be both. Maybe they're maybeall spirit creatures that exist are all demons
and like some are just like nicerthan other ones or something. But yeah,
I guess my only reaction to like, what was that was that I

(01:12:04):
experienced? I was doom scrolling onInstagram, like I'm a year ago,
and I came across a video thathad almost exactly the sound I heard.
I was like, oh my god, that's it. That's the sound.
Holy shit, the sound from mydemon experience is captured on camera. What

(01:12:26):
was creating the sound? And inthis video were two cougars, Like what
mountain lions or two wild cats ofsome species fighting. I'm in a very
very wild place, and so maybeI woke up to legit cats fighting outside
the property. And that's why myfriend also heard them. That's why I

(01:12:46):
heard them again later, is becausethey were fighting outside in that wild part
of the land where I was living. Mm. So that was like I
was like, oh my god,that's so relieving. Like I have wondered
about the is there an entire universeof spirit beings that are like messing with
humans? And now I know it'sjust cats. That's pretty cool. So

(01:13:13):
I know a lot of people whohave like they're like, I've got this
brilliant idea for a documentary. I'vegot this awesome idea. This is going
to be so great, they neverget around to making it. Where would
you suggest that someone would start ifthey have an awesome idea for a documentary?
That brings up an a creuble question. Okay, so I want to

(01:13:35):
build a how I made this documentarycourse so your audience can hold me to
it. I want to create it, and it's just a matter of spending
the time and effort to learn howto make a course but also make it
valuable to everybody, and so ifyou want to support that, support the
Patreon, Patreon dot com, Forwardslash Witness Underground, excellent look, shameless

(01:13:58):
pluck. So when I was formingmy idea, it was sort of like,
first, get the skills to makea documentary, like learn how to
do documentary working for other people.So I actually, I mean, maybe
not everyone has this opportunity, butyou all have. Everyone now has a
high definition camera in their pocket,so you have no excuse if you have

(01:14:18):
a story to tell to start capturingit. And in the way, I
guess like there's an endless on informationabout how to do this, but I
can tell you what I did.I had an idea for a topic that
I wanted to explore, and Ididn't know how to do interviews. So
I guess I'll tell you what Idid, and I'll tell you what I

(01:14:40):
think would be faster and more efficientafter learning how I've done it. But
I had an idea I really suck. I was like, how do I
tell this hard problem shunning? Howdo I talk about the leaving the Jehova's
Witnesses experience? What if I meetother people? And I kept on meeting
other people and that was actually whatkind of got me to do it.
But I was like, hey,would you be willing to tell your story
on camera? And I don't knowwhat will make but I'll i will make

(01:15:03):
something with it. I'll cut it, I'll put it out raw, I
will I'll do something to like honoryour story for well, I'm learning how
to do this, and they're like, yeh, that sounds great and a
lot of people want to do that. So in my case, it's really
heavy, difficult topic, and documentariesaren't always heavy and difficult and personal like
mine. It's way harder to dothat you can do. There's plenty of

(01:15:26):
documentaries eighties seventies eighties were like veryeducational. There's war documentaries, or like
here's a bunch of photographs and here'ssomeone talking about their time and you show
the photographs and that gilds you somevisuals. Ultimately, you're doing an interview
and learning how to interview someone andmake that person feel comfortable to tell you
the topic, whatever, whatever questionyou have is a skill set and you

(01:15:48):
can only learn it by doing it, I think, and to fast track
that, I would suggest like makinga movie is a lot of skill sets
there's lighting, cameras, audio editing, yeah, story editing, a lot
of tools you have to learn howto use. And the main hard problem

(01:16:09):
of documentary is interviewing somebody, whichis really being a good storyteller or a
good question asker, diving into yourcuriosities. And I started making a podcast
because I realized that it takes threeyears to go from zero to having a
finished documentary. That's if you workreally hard at it and you don't have
a professional team, and you're learningit all as you go, like me,

(01:16:30):
and I already had like seven yearsof experience doing this kind of stuff,
learning and how to use all thetools when I went to make this
one, so I had already builta skill set in a background in this.
If you're starting from scratch, Iwould say, become a guest on
a podcast. That's the easiest wayto learn some of the skills about formatting
a story, and then maybe makeyour own podcast, because that's the fastest

(01:16:56):
way to tell someone's story, tocapture a story and get it out in
the world. And now you cango live on YouTube with stream yard or
somethings like like it, or evenjust like using basic tools or zoom.
You can just do an interview likethis and then put it out, download
it, upload a YouTube, andthen you have it out there and you
can learn that way. There's alot of really really fast, cheap ways
or like anchors of free podcast hostingsite, you can you can start for

(01:17:18):
no money right now and it's amazing. Like making a movie, making a
documentary is like a lot of skillsets, and that's why credits are so
long. So advice is like meetother people who also want to do it,
and then try to do something together. Try to make something that's five
minutes long and only do that.Like that, that's your guiding limit,

(01:17:38):
Like tell a story in five minutes, what is that? Or a short
film? A short film like fortyhour film project is a really fun make
a film in two days from noideas to writing it, shooting and editing
it, doing the score, everything, color, soundtrack in two days.
That's a really get involved in ateam that does that because that teaches you
a ton and a short amount oflike the most shortest uration of time possile

(01:18:00):
make it. Make a film inseven minutes, make a documentary that's seven
minutes long, something like that.Give yourself a challenge and you can do
it with your telephone. And Ithink you're just gonna a documentary like documentary,
like narrative film. You're gonna writea script and you're gonna spend months
making that script really tight and likecompelling, and get the characters writing,
get the dialogue right, and you'regonna draw the scenes and make sure that

(01:18:23):
you like, where would this be. Oh, it's gonna be in a
kitchen. Oh, this is gonnabe on a mountaintop. Okay, we
have to have two locations, mountaintopand a kitchen. Awesome, that's the
movie. And you go and youplan it all out and you go shoot
it and you know exactly what isthe edit. That's like a couple of
days because you already know exactly whatyou have. You shot exactly what you
wanted to, nothing extra. Maybeyou have a couple takes of a scene.
Documentary is exactly opposite. You overshootlike ten twenty x because you don't

(01:18:46):
you think you know what the storyis, and when you talk to somebody,
you have no idea what they're gonnasay or how they're gonna say it,
or what's the emotion you think thatme leaving your help's witnesses was one
thing, but really it's a wholedifferent topic about demons, and so like
that's a whole new world to getinto. So you're you're you're outlined for
your documentary idea to interview Scott homeand about his experience, and the jos

(01:19:11):
witness is completely off from what youwrote down. So now you're like,
Okay, back to the drawing board, what is this story really going to
be? So you have you haveall this stuff, all these questions you
asked have nothing to do with demons, but its real stories demons, and
then you have to go rewrite yourscript and then you have all this unusable
footage because it has nothing to dowith that topic. And you finally got
into it was an hour and ahalf into the interview, and that's a

(01:19:33):
different story than you thought. Solike that's documentary is more like that you
have twenty eight more stuff you haveto sift through. It takes a year
and a half to edit. Ithelps if you have a team that's like
a yeah, and look stuff shotin the phone. It's fine. I
know that you you you can shootbroadcast quality on your phone, especially with

(01:19:55):
some phones. Yeah, it's possible, it's worth I'm sure there's websites dedicated
to that, like people have shotlike Mercedes Benz. It is like a
famous for having an iPhone commercial orsomething like. It's very doable, but
you're you know, you're rigging upthis phone onto like twenty thousand dollars of
equipment to make it like move thisway smoothly, or move in and out

(01:20:16):
of the screen in a way that'svery cinematic, or you have the lighting
people set things up in a certainway that's like, it's not the phone,
Like the sensor is the least importantpart. The sensor and the lens
are kind of smaller in importance thanlike the lighting. And the story it
goes in the story goes, itgoes story audio and then visuals, So

(01:20:38):
get your story solid and then hirean audio person from the beginning, because
that you're always gonna want that.It sucks if you have a bad audio,
no one will pay attention. Andthen and you're gonna be editing for
months to give bad audio. Geta proper microphone and hire someone to take
care of it. And then visualsare like you could have a blurry image
from nineteen seventy two and people wouldbe like, wow, that was cool

(01:20:58):
story. Yeah, yeah, forsure. I was watching a documentary about
a Poulta geist in an apartment inEngland and it was footage from the sixties
or seventies, I can't remember theexact year. And yeah, but it
was such a compelling story. Iwas just what I was engrossed in this
and I was going down a rabbithole of Polta geists and demons. But

(01:21:21):
that's another hole funny infects. Itis a very fun topic and you must
have started with an advantage then withbeing involved with music for so long,
then audio must be almost like asecond second language to you. Yeah,
it's definitely about a huge, hugelevel up in terms of like my taste

(01:21:45):
and also my ear for quality,in vocal quality, Like I always use
two microphones. That's also a trickof the trade minimum of two microphones,
usually two microphones of different technology isvery different characteristics and every single if you
want to get into the weeds ofaudio. But like I have been since
I was a teenager, But likemy voice, how it reacts to this

(01:22:06):
microphone in this room with the reflectionsof this ceiling and the walls and this
countertop I'm sitting on like a terribleenvironment, honestly sorry, show recording audio.
And then plus like a lapel micis a different technology that sits next
to you that picks up different frequenciesof my voice in this room, and

(01:22:26):
then you can go and cancel out. I go into and I do an
EQ where I like pull down anyresonant frequencies that have like a whistling sound.
I'll spike them up and I'll likedrag them across a sweep and try
to find resonant frequencies that are ugly. I'll pull those down by six decibels
negative successibles. And then I'll dothat to every single bad frequency in each
microphone, and then I combine themand I like I pull the volume levels
until they sound the most full andnatural voice possible. That's my like,

(01:22:50):
I want to do a whole moduleon that, because that's like, that's
what makes I've had guys who runpost production sound in Hollywood tell me that
they've never heard a film sound asgoes mind when they got it from their
novice filmmaker, and that's when itlistened to their stuff. And I've been
like, oh, the audio soundsterrible, and there are films that they
finished. It's like my stuff soundedbetter when I gave it to them than

(01:23:11):
the films they finished. Sound Ishould just do my own sound, which
I ended up doing their own soundbecause I'm kind of a nut about sound
quality and I can see what you'resaying, and it would be intimidating to
anyone who's hearing that and going wow, I've got no expertise in that.
But that's like the next level stuffat the start. Yeah, find an
interesting topic, shoot it and uploadit. It's got to be easier than

(01:23:33):
ever to The barrier of ntry isvery low. Put it up on YouTube.
See what happens. What's the worstthing is going to happen. No
one's gonna watch it. That's fine, exactly, but it's it. There's
five views. Even the microphone onyour phone, it's actually really cool technology.
Like there's a directional mic on here, and there's two there's a microphone
here by the port, and there'sanother one on top. And so almost

(01:23:56):
all phones for the last eight yearshave had two microphones. And what they
do with that, as you havethey cancel out frequencies that are on.
It does echo cancelation, it doesfrequency stuff. There's just like a lot
of software and there's two two microphonesis good hardware. Plus the's like good
software working to make the sound qualityas good as it can be in a
noisy environment. That's those phone callswe make are like in a subway,

(01:24:19):
in traffic, out on the streetwith a lawnmower next door. So like
phones have already done a lot,so you can actually you actually get pretty
good quality vocal especially human vocal qualityout of a phone's microphone. That would
be totally acceptable in today's world.I mean, most people are doing their
podcasts with something like Zoom or asimilar app, and they don't even have

(01:24:40):
a real microphone. Like a tonof podcasts are like that using the laptop's
microphone. It's not ideal. There'sdefinitely a better situations. I bought a
nice mic for this, but andyou should. But you don't. You
can start with what you have.And I think that's like the lesson of
my past and a lesson from thepeople in my movie. The people in
the movie this music community is calledNuclear Gopher. They had a tape recorder
in the middle of a room andthat's what they started producing albums on,

(01:25:05):
and that was it they had.They would take a single take of a
live performance, and then they foundsomething like one of their parents had like
a two a dual cassette thing fromthe nineteen seventies where you could do they
called it overdubbed multi tracking. Theywould take the raw take of like just
the guitar or just the drums,and they would put it onto another cassette.

(01:25:25):
But somehow they were able to likemulti track in this with their cassette
recorder. I don't even know how. I don't actually understand that works.
Then later they got a four track, which then separates the ribbon of tape
into like four separate zones where youcan record four times on the same section
of tape, and then you mixit. And then when it's done,
it's like one you like do thedrums, and then the person listens to
the drums and plays guitar at thesame time to keep the timing right.

(01:25:45):
And then the next person's listening tothe drums and the guitar and they're playing
the keyboard on that, and thenthe third person's listening to all three together
and doing the vocals. Kind ofthat would be one arrangement. You can
do it in one order, solike that technolo. But they started out
with nothing, and even then,like a four track cassette recorder by Taskam
for one hundred and fifty bucks innineteen eighty seven or whatever in nineteen ninety

(01:26:06):
was pretty much the bottom of thebarrel when it comes to sound quality.
But they still recorded incredible stuff,and they got better and better at using
it and dialing and getting the levelsright so that it's actually sounded really professional,
and you can do We're in awe're like orders a magnitude in a
better place right now. If youare thinking about creating a documentary using exactly

(01:26:29):
what you have, If you puttelephone in a laptop, you have a
thousand times better technology than people hadin the nineties, What's what do you
hope to do with your documentary?Like at the moment, you can find
witness undergrand on Witness undergrund dot com. You can go to either hire it
or purchase it there. And areyou hoping to get it onto one of

(01:26:50):
these streaming services a TV channel?Yeah, so we just did a kickshutter
for that exact reason. It's ait's a finishing funds Kickshutter. It's like
the final goal. We have aperfectly finished film, at won an award,
I went to eleven film festivals.Now what do we do with it?
How do you get it distributed?So I've spent the last two years
of my life trying to crack thatnut, like, how do you actually

(01:27:10):
distribute a film and not get screwedover by a distribution company that's parasitic and
trying to rob you of your artfor twenty five years and make you pay
for the privilege, which is whata lot of issuation companies are doing and
have been doing for a long time. So I found an indie path through
a lot of indie filmmakers who arevery successful and really cool people that I
met in my time in film festivalsand in Hollywood area, and I just
was living in La the last fewyears during the making of this film and

(01:27:34):
the goal of the Kickshutter. Weraised twenty thousand dollars to get it released
and distributed, So we just gotto that spot. So we're in a
good spot to now go get itout in the world. A bit wrapped
up with giving everyone in the kickshutterthe things that they paid for, so
it's a bit of a delay,but it's all related, like I have

(01:27:54):
to recut the film for that,and that will be the final version of
film that will go ideally and toobe, and I'm fully we're doing it
fully independent, so I'm in charge. It's owned by its own business win
it's Underground LLC. And it isa bigger project than that. It is
also a witness Unerground podcast, soit's an extension to the movie, and
with that, it's not just anostalgic piece. Like the film's about a

(01:28:16):
music scene that existed and then kindof filtered away, and it's like,
well, what did all those artistsdo after that? Well, they also
went and made they meant twice asmuch music that's way better and way more
powerful. But they also like thatwas a long time ago also and they
still make music, but it's likenot so connected to that topic or that
scene anymore. They're definitely grown in. They're professionals. But like, well,

(01:28:38):
what the podcast is is like,well, I've now found people keep
believing in this religion, like onehundred thousand people a year or leave,
and a lot of them are musicians, or they go and they finally go
and become a musician and they havesomething to say, and it's kind of
like, well, if that thinghappened in that movie with those people,
maybe that same thing happened to peopleall over the world. So there's bands
in Australia and New Zealand have reachedout. There's bands in California, Washington,

(01:29:00):
Oregon, Canada who've reached out thatare amazing ex Jehovah's Witness artists,
and I want to expand that,I think. I mean, it's one
it's one thing to have a nicheand like stick with it because like people
expect a certain thing. But I'mthinking about expanding to other religions. I
have know some ex Mormons who arein bands and other artists, other kinds
of artists have authors have come onand painters and stuff. But yeah,

(01:29:21):
in terms I want them. Themovie is gonna get out the whole the
whole point of the kicture was toget it out onto tub as our first
goal, but then eventually Apple andAmazon Prime and probably eventually on Google Play.
And there's like thirty five other smallerstreaming services that have ads, like
free v I think it's Amazon owned, but it's a smaller service and Voodoo,

(01:29:45):
and we'll go for all of themat some point, but it's like
one at a time kind of strategyto like point everyone like, Okay,
here's the new spot. Let's gosee like what we can do to like
push this one. And the peoplethat follow the film are big supporters,
and a lot of people join thePatreon to keep the podcast running and like
help be part of the experience ofthe creation of the film. Like I

(01:30:05):
like I last yesterday, I putout a word to like everyone on the
Patreon, like, hey, we'redoing film extras, the director's commentary,
Like what part of the movie doyou want to know more about? That
will help guide our creation of thedirector's counter I have to write them for
different parts, and they need toprobably be like an hour long, not
extend the movie seven hours, butlike, you know, a reasonable amount

(01:30:25):
of time to give some more information. I have a whole podcast. If
you want to really know more,to listen to the podcast. But you
know, it makes a nice thing, but like it's nice to like include
people. I had people like weneed to write a logline for IMDb for
the movie, like can you helpme write like a really concise one sentence
take on what this film is.And then a bunch of the patrons like
came up and we just like ashedout like a bunch of versions of one

(01:30:46):
sentence that describes a whole movie sowe can get the IMDb complete and then
get a ratiing on IMDb. Andwe did, and it's like it's fun
to include people in the filmmaking process. And I'm learning as I go.
So it's like a first time filmmakerlike slow slow master course, I guess
or amateur learn as you go,car DIY course. Social impact is the

(01:31:09):
overarching huge goal, just only onthe artists who leave religion and then go
and create really cool stuff. Whyis it that the best music comes from
pain, comes from breakups, comesfrom stuff ending? Maybe like news is
like that too, right, there'snot that much good news on the news.
People tell oh, there was anearthquake and a lot of people died,

(01:31:30):
or there's a war. Look atall this, look at all the
carnage. Oh this person said somethingcrazy. He must be in saying how
is he the leader of our country? And we love that as a human
species. Somehow we're like addicted tobad news. So maybe like we're attracted
to stories of other people's pains thateither we can relate to it because we
went through it, or it's likesatisfying to see someone else suffer more than

(01:31:55):
U. I don't know. Thereis a psychological principle apply there, and
that is that is that we arehardwired towards being attracted to bad news right
and detracted. Because when we're huntgatherers as an ancient being, we're walking
around and it's like if we know, if we remember there's a strawberry patch
over there, there's a lion inthe other field over there. If you

(01:32:18):
miss the strawberry patch and forget,you're not gonna have strawberries today. You'll
be okay, you'll find something elseto eat. If you forget once that
the lion is on the other sideand he ate your best friend, you
have to remember that because you'll die. So I think that we're hardwired to
focus and on bad news, andI've never thought about it in terms of

(01:32:39):
music. Yeah, So in termsof news, I think that that hacks
our brains to go all these badnews that I'd better pay to pay attention
otherwise that could happen to me whateverit is that's happening to someone on there.
So I think that that grabs ourattention more. You get more eyeballs
on it, you get more peoplewatching the ad breaks, and then that
means people are more money. Soyeah, that I'm never to Yeah,

(01:33:04):
there's something because I mean, what'sa what's an experience of good music?
I mean, I guess there's lovesongs. There's lots of probably more of
songs of pain from relationships, butthere are love songs that are sweet and
people will get it. Those arethe ones that they play at weddings.
But then there's like, oh,like there's there's like nice songs about Jesus.

(01:33:26):
I don't those those There's a hugemarket in the Christian music world that
I als, like, I mean, as a Joho Zwinnis, you can't
listen to Christian music. It's offlimits. Like it's like a hard no
because it's like false religion. ButI mean all those songs are like I
Love Jesus. And you saw theSouth Park where like Cartman's like I'm gonna
Platinum music Star. He like takesall these sexual songs and he replaces baby

(01:33:49):
with Jesus. Yeah, it's sofunny. But this idea that like there's
all these songs are so sweet aboutloving Jesus and God, they're like so
not interesting. Like I don't know, I was never attracted, Like I'm
repelled completely by that kind of thing. And maybe there's a psychological thing it's

(01:34:09):
like good news or even like it'salmost like fiction, like sweet fiction.
I don't know. That's how Isee it. But maybe it's not.
I'm I'm unattractive completely to that.Maybe there's some people who are like,
oh my god, I only lovesongs about loving Jesus. That's my favorite
genre. Maybe I don't know,Yeah, exactly the ned Flanders of the

(01:34:32):
world. Thanks so much for takingthe time to have a chat with me,
Scott. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jamie. No, that was
really fun. I feel like wewent on some really fun rabbit holes that
Yeah, like it's a pleasure forme to be able to tell what I
believe, even if it sounds insaneor but it's it's like it's kind of
it's nice to be that honest.That is Scott Homan, the filmmaker who

(01:34:53):
made Witness Underground And if you wantto find out more about it or even
watch it. Go to witness underground dot com and you can get all
the information there. As he said, he's getting it shopped around a streaming
channels. Maybe jump on now orhang out till it ends up on I'm
sure it's going to end up somewherelike on Netflix. And this is going

(01:35:14):
to be a pretty big thing becausethis documentary, as much as it's extremely
important for anyone who's left a religionand felt that they've been treated unfairly,
I think it's got a wider implicationthan that. I think it's also got
something in it for people that haveleft any type of organization and felt suddenly

(01:35:35):
like their persona non grata, likethey've been shunned, even people that have
left left jobs. And I can'tbelieve I'm been admitting this, but now
I'm gonna do it. I'm goingto admit it. When I've left jobs,
have this weird compulsion to check myfriend's list on social media and look

(01:35:57):
at who's deleted me off and whowho's kept me. And when I see
people have deleted me off their socialmedia, I like to add them back
on, not necessarily because I wantthem as friends, but because I just
want them to know that. Iknow that they deleted me when we stop
working together. I don't know whyI do that. Perhaps it's a sign
that I should get a life.Well, I've got a life now making

(01:36:21):
this podcast and talking to really interestingpeople like Scott and I love the fact
that I get to do this.This is such a great, great gig
to find interesting people with amazing storiesand then share them with you. Thanks
so much to everyone who has sharedmy show on social media and helped boost

(01:36:43):
up my audience numbers. That's great. We're growing all the time. I
love seeing this and thank you forbeing one of the early adopters of the
show and listening to it before everyoneelse did. And one day you'll be
saying I was listening to that beforeit was cool. Okayone who has liked
it on the platforms and rated itmaximum stars and left comments, you're just

(01:37:05):
so bloody awesome. Thank you,And if you haven't done that, get
onto it. Come on, I'llcatch you next time on Jamie's Club.

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