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Revisiting ‘The Vow’: Season 2 Recap with Ayla Fitzpatrick

Do you have a million questions about season 2 of HBO’s The Vow? Do you want to be part of a super exclusive club full of people that are rock and roll as fuck? Do you get a buzz out of supporting culty content creators and storytellers?

Then you should totally join our Patreon, where we unleash a whole slew of bonus content for our nearest and dearest listeners. But while we’ve traditionally reserved our coverage of The Vow for said exclusive cult—sorry, I mean club—we’re making an exception today and sharing some of it with all of our listeners. If you like what you hear, just know there’s plenty more of it available for an extremely agreeable price. If you’re not interested, don’t worry, we still love you! Just less. (Kidding)

On today’s episode, we’re recapping our feelings about the entire second season with special guest Ayla Fitzpatrick, who previously worked in Albany, New York at News10ABC covering NXIVM, focusing on Keith Raniere’s arrest and the ensuing trial. Even though she’s no longer a journalist, she loves to keep up to date with all things cultiverse—just like you guys!

So what did we think about being featured less heavily in this season? Did NXIVM actually cure Tourette’s syndrome (hint: no!), and was the whole documentation and conversation around this triggering or retraumatizing for us? Well, you’ll just have to tune in to find out.

Episode available since January 30, 2023

Esoterica

Humans can understand apes’ sign language, new study finds

From pointing to animated arm movements and nodding, people regularly employ gestures to accompany and create language.

Now, it’s been suggested that humans can also understand sign language used by apes, meaning humans may retain an understanding of ape communication from their ancestors.

Great apes deploy more than 80 signals to communicate everyday goals, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Biology.

. . .

Chimpanzees and bonobos, which share more than 90% of their gestures, are humans’ closest living relatives, the study said. Their gestures have been suggested to be an important framework in the evolution of human language, according to study authors Kirsty E. Graham, a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews’ School of Psychology and Neuroscience in Scotland, and primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, a principal investigator at the university’s Wild Minds Lab.

Infants ages 1 to 2 have been found to use more than 50 gestures from the ape repertoire, researchers said. It was therefore thought that humans may have retained their understanding of core features of ape gestures.

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The Community: Jamiyla Chisholm’s Memoir of a Brooklyn Islamic Commune

Hold onto your seatbelt, cuz we’re blasting back to the ‘70s for this one. Here’s the scene: we’re in Brooklyn, New York, at a time when all five boroughs were spiraling into ungovernable anarchy, with crime, violence, and widespread racism leaving the deteriorating metropolis totally ungovernable. If you were Black, you were particularly ostracized and lived in constant danger as a second class citizen (if only this weren’t still true today). And so it’s no real surprise that when people like Jamiyla Chisholm’s father heard about a religious community that would, as Jamiyla put it, protect them from the hellish world and teach them how “they should live as Black people,” they were drawn like moths to a flame.

While we’ve seen time and time again that cults prey on the vulnerable, this often takes advantage of an individual’s current mental, financial, or even physical state. In this particular case, one leader took advantage of nation-wide racial tensions in order to seduce hundreds of people into his community, which merged practices from Islam, Judaism, and various political ideologies.

Who was this leader? Well, we don’t want to give it all away…but here’s a hint: the supreme douchebag is serving 135 years in prison for what’s been reported as the largest prosecution of child molestation ever directed at an individual in the history of the USA.

To find out who we’re talking about, tune in to hear author, journalist, storyteller and educator Jamiyla Chisholm discuss her own experience as a member of this cult, as detailed in her memoir, The Community.

Episode available since January 23, 2023

Esoterica

#GoldenGlobes host Jerrod Carmichael makes a dig at Scientology: "Backstage, I found these three Golden Globe awards that Tom Cruise returned...I think maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige." https://t.co/m069JEKekW pic.twitter.com/fw25ng5nU2

— Variety (@Variety) January 11, 2023

The Scientology Joke That Sucked the Air Out of the Room at the Golden Globes

If, like me, you spent much of Tuesday’s 80th Golden Globes scanning Twitter, you probably noted that its host, Jerrod Carmichael, received some mixed reactions. During the ceremony, the comedian told the audience to shut up (he was justified), made a new joke about The Slap™, and spent much of his monologue reminding viewers why he was hired for the not-not-racist Hollywood Foreign Press Association-helmed show in the first place: “I’m here ‘cause I’m Black.”

In this girl’s book, though? Carmichael scored even more points when he dared to mention the wife of a certain terrifying institution leader. In case you stopped watching after the first award, midway though the ceremony, the host returned from a commercial break, toting three statues in his hands. “Backstage, I found these three Golden Globe Awards that Tom Cruise returned,” Carmichael began. “Look, I’m just the host briefly, whatever, but I have a pitch: I think maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige?”

Invoking Scientology’s She-Who-Must-Not-Be-named elicited “shocked gasps,” per reports. I know! How dare this man mention a woman who hasn’t been seen in public since 2007!

Now, in the if you’ve never heard her name (unlikely), Shelly is (was?) the wife of the Church of Scientology leader, David Miscavige. For nearly two decades, questions have swirled surrounding Shelly’s whereabouts. In 2013, former Scientologist and friend of the Miscaviges, actress Leah Remini, filed a missing person’s report with the Los Angeles Police Department after she left the institution. She’s since dedicated entire episodes of her A&E series to her investigation, mentioned it innumerable times in the press, and wrote viral Twitter threads about Shelley’s disappearance from public life.

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One Billion Years: Mike Rinder on How Scientology Could End

Scientology: You know it, you hate it. To be fair, unless you’re a Scientologist, they hate you too! So it’s all even-stevens. But one person they really hate is Mike Rinder. How could anyone hate someone who’s last name sounds like reindeer, especially just a few weeks after Santa made his international rounds on that reindeer-driven slay? Well, having spent his youth doing things like, for example, swabbing the decks of L. Ron Hubbard’s yacht, Rinder eventually made it into the elite sect of Scientology known as the Sea Organization, eventually becoming Scientology’s International Spokesperson and the head of its Office of Special Affairs. Then, he escaped and became a fearless and outspoken ex-member. If you didn’t listen to the first interview we did with Mike, we’re officially mad at you! But we can forgive and forget—just check it out here.

So why did we have him back on the show? Because he’s so fucking lovely. Also, because he just released his new memoir: A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology. It’s a batshit crazy and exclusive, first-hand look into the inner workings of Scientology and the harm this organization does to its brainwashed members. And in today's episode, we specifically get into how Scientology could potentially come to an end (hint: it involves the IRS no longer putting up with the “church’s” bullshit).

So say a little prayer to Xenu and strap on in, cuz this one’s a wild ride!

Episode available since January 16, 2023

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The Kids Are Alright: Sarah & Nippy on Zen Parenting

Here’s a scary thought: fully-grown adults are susceptible to cults, or cult-adjacent behavior (there is truly cultish influence all around us in politics, wellness communities, and so on). So imagine how dangerous this whole world is for children, who are far less likely to have the wherewithal to identify and refute coercive persuasion. If you’re one of our regular listeners, you already know how ubiquitous this shit is (unfortunately); so what can we do to protect our youth?

Well, that’s exactly what we got into with our friends over at Zen Parenting Radio, where Cathy Cassani Adams (a self proclaimed “spiritual and emotional mom”) and Todd Adams (“a logical and practical dad'') get into all things parenting. On their show, we not only recount our own story with NXIVM (perhaps you’ve heard about, read about, or seen it by now?), but also the importance of talking to kids about how relationships that might initially feel exciting or just “good” in some way—friends, coaches, teachers, bosses, etc.—can quickly pivot into something abusive. How can we teach kids to identify culty behavior and help them feel safe enough to ask for help?

This one’s for anyone who believes we need to keep our kids safe from evil, shitty shitheads.

Episode available since January 09, 2023

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Cult to Comedy: Shannon Payton on Turning Trauma into Humor

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Shannon Payton, perhaps better known online as “Shanny Pants,” is a hilarious mother of three whose Tiktoks (etc.) have turned her into a viral queen, with her videos even appearing on TVs across the nation via The Kelly Clarkson show. It’s crazy to think that, for the first 31 years of her life, Payton was actually living something more similar to The Culty Clarkson show (we’re so sorry, we had to try), having grown up in Northern California within a community that her grandparents originally joined as a non-denominational bible study club before it turned into a fear and shame-based cult, ruled by a wacky shithead who loved “marking” (ex-communicating) anyone who questioned him, and who also forbid women from wearing pants or basically being like, humans with any rights or autonomy whatsoever. Fun!

Episode available since January 02, 2023

Esoterica

Pope warns Vatican staff an ‘elegant demon’ lurks among them

Pope Francis warned Vatican bureaucrats on Thursday to beware the devil that lurks among them, saying it is an “elegant demon” that works in people who have a rigid, holier-than-thou way of living the Catholic faith.

Francis used his annual Christmas greeting to the Roman Curia to again put the cardinals, bishops and priests who work in the Holy See on notice that they are by no means beyond reproach and are, in fact, particularly vulnerable to evil.

Francis told them that by living in the heart of the Catholic Church, “we could easily fall into the temptation of thinking we are safe, better than others, no longer in need of conversion.”

. . .

Beyond that, Francis appeared to also want to take broader aim at arch-conservatives and traditionalists who have become the pope’s biggest critics. Francis blasted their way of living the faith, insisting that being Catholic doesn’t mean following a never-changing set of dicta but is rather a “process of understanding Christ’s message that never ends, but constantly challenges us.”

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Hot Mess Express: Karen Unterreiner on Dating Keith Raniere

We all have exes we wish we could forget—the narcissists, the psychopaths, the ruthless, small-handed cult leader currently serving #120years in prison. It’s a tale as old as time! But few people have lived that story quite like Karen Unterreiner did when, at only 18-years-old, she became romantically intertwined with Keith Raniere. Over the next 40 years, she’d go on to become a top level NXIVM trainer, a key figure of the Executive Success Programs’ leadership committee, and an overseer of administration (bookkeeping) and IT.

Now free of Raniere’s coercive control (read: fuckery), Unterreiner has spent the last five years recovering and discovering her true self. For today’s episode, we spoke with her about dating an actual monster, how NXIVM functioned as a company, (and why it was messy), and whether or not the technology they used was actually any good, or more like rubbing two sticks together.

Episode available since December 26, 2022

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Parent Traps: Diane Dierks & Dr. Rick Voyles on Co-Parenting Dilemmas

If conflict resolution were easy, North and South Korea would no longer be at war, Princes Harry and William would be enjoying tea time together, and videos of irate plane passengers losing their God damn marbles would no longer fill our TikTok feeds. But we all know that resolving or letting go of hot blooded arguments is no easy task. Enter licensed marriage and family therapist Diane Dierks with Dr. Rick Voyles, the CEO of the Center of Dispute Solutions, and their fabulously insightful podcast “Co-Parent Dilemmas,” which aims to provide practical solutions to families struggling with co-parenting.

We’re lucky to have these two experienced smarties on the show with us to discuss a specific and controversial topic: what some refer to as “the alienating parent,” which relates heavily to one of our favorite topics on this show (although least favorite things in like, “real life”), the cult of one. Now, the National Center for State Courts defines parental alienation as “a strategy whereby one parent intentionally displays to the child unjustified negativity aimed at the other parent.” But why has the term brought up some of that good ol’ conflict we mentioned amongst clinicians today, dividing those who use the term and those who refuse to? And what effects does it have on the children themselves? Tune in and learn with us…or we’re going to have our own conflict to resolve!

Episode available since December 19, 2022

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Perfect Prey: Dr. Christine Cocchiola on Coercive Control

The Latin root for the word “coercive” literally means to surround, encompass, restrain, confine, and so on. So what does “coercive control” look like in real life, you ask? Well, it could involve isolating someone away from friends and family, depriving them of basic human needs (food, water, etc.), humiliating them, managing someone else’s finances, and the like. If it’s a shitty way of controlling another human, like having an invisible chain wrapped around their ankles, it’s coercive control. If you want a pop culture reference, look no further than Britney Spears’ “Toxic” family usurping her finances and personal agency for her nearly 14-year conservatorship.

But does it still feel abstract? Then you need to listen to today’s episode, complete with special guest Dr. Christine Cocchiola, a coercive control advocate, researcher, educator, and survivor, (meaning she’s able to speak on the subject from both personal and scholarly levels). During our talk, she breaks down how narcissism, shame, egos, and “perfect preys” play out with everyone from romantic partners to people in power, such as cult leaders.

Are you perhaps being controlled by someone without even realizing it? Maybe! Could that be detrimental to your life! Absolutely! So tune in to find out.

Episode available since December 12, 2022