Armchair Anonymous: Cults II

Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us about a time they escaped a cult. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Mon Padman.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Hi. You're trying it out. It doesn't sound right on you.

• 0:09Dax Shepard?

  Not when you do first and last name. Mon Padman? That sounds like Mansour Padman, which is pretty cool.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is cool.

• 0:17Dax Shepard?

  Maybe it is good. Monty Padman, that sounds crazy, too. These nicknames, when they're in conjunction with your full name, maybe don't work.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Okay, that's fine.

• 0:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Like D D Shepherd?

• 0:27Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, D D Shepherd. That's, that sounds fun. Today is part two of one of our favorite prompts ever, escaping a cult.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is tough. It's tough out there, but you do, we learned a lot. There's some real through lines.

• 0:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, there's some consistencies.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's good to know them.

• 0:47Dax Shepard?

  Some patterns, and maybe if you've recognized that one of these things is happening in your life.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  And if you're a vegetarian, you're in a cult.

• 0:54Dax Shepard?

  If you get invited to a vegetarian meal, you're dust. No, but I will say, it made me think there's a lot more than I'm aware of. I just stupidly assume I'll see a doc about them if they're real. It makes me think you're bumping into people all the time that probably were raised in some of these fringy religious tradition. Yeah, cults. Oh, I am a pussyfooting around about it. Please enjoy Cults, Part Two. We get support from Quince.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts and Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself, because let's be honest, self-gifting is a love language.

• 1:44Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. Full-on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  It's the dream. The cashmere sweater is starting at $60. Down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.

• 2:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm gonna tell you this. It just got chilly for the first time this year in California, and I'm so excited. And I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel-quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef-grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here, and it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five-star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.

• 2:46Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from Gusto. So here's the thing about running a small business that nobody romanticizes. It's not the big idea that wears you down, it's the payroll, the tax filings, the wait, do I need workers' comp for this stuff? That's the part that quietly eats away your whole afternoon, which is where Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses.

• 3:30Dax Shepard?

  It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay onboard and support your team from anywhere. They handle automatic tax filing, direct deposits, health benefits, 401K, all of it. And you get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. No hidden fees, no surprises. If something tricky comes up, you've got direct access to certified HR experts who actually know what they're talking about. And they're ranked number one on G2's Highest Satisfaction Products List for 2026, entrusted by over 500,000 small businesses. That's not nothing. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dax and get three months free when you run your first payroll.

• 4:12Dax Shepard?

  That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dax. Again, that's gusto.com/dax.

• 4:40Dax Shepard?

  Hi, is this Taj?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yes, it's so good to meet you guys.

• 4:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful to meet you. You're my first Taj. Is this a family name?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  My real name is Amy.

• 4:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  I have a very common last name and about 10 years ago, I decided, you know, there's too many in the world. So I'm just going to pick a different name.

• 4:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I love this. You rebranded.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  My brother and I both have done this.

• 5:03Dax Shepard?

  And did the people around you immediately accept it? Or did you have people that were still calling you Cassius Clay?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Well, I live in Portland, Oregon, where everybody changes their name.

• 5:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's a great place to change your name.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  But my mom, who at the time was still living in New Jersey, she has passed since then. She freaked out because she was a therapist and the only person that she knew who had changed their name was a schizophrenic patient.

• 5:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. So she-

• 5:28Speaker 02

  She thought that was a bad omen. She thought that her kids were going cuckoo over here. You know, the topic I would love to briefly touch on with you, Dax, is improv.

• 5:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yes, please.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  So I used to be painfully shy and that comes out in the story because it happened just after college. And improv has really changed my life. And it's not that I was ever interested in being in front of the camera, but it's a mindfulness practice and also for helping you be a better human. So I just wondered if you had ever come across that approach to improv.

• 5:57Dax Shepard?

  I want to hear about yours. So someone taught you and it was taught with the intention of the life practice more than a pursuit?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  I actually came across that myself. When I was living in Flagstaff, my next door neighbor was a meditation teacher. I was a lapsed meditator and you know that old Reese's commercial where two people bump into each other? One has peanut butter and one has chocolate?

• 6:17Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  So it was like, you got meditation in my improv. No, you got improv in my meditation. So during the pandemic, we started teaching mindful improv and meditation using improv games.

• 6:29Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Now tell me why you think that's a good overlap. Right out of the gates, I would go like, presence is required.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Listening. Yeah. And you have to let go of your idea because let's say you start a scene with somebody and you think you're in a barn and they say, nurse, hand me the scalpel, something like that. And you have to just let go right away or else it's going to be like tug of war. And just be present with what is and let go of ego and the less you try to be funny. I know you guys know if you're trying to put in the crazy things, it doesn't work.

• 6:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's a spirit of harmony. And collaboration, it doesn't work if someone's steamrolling. Okay, I like that. All right. Alas, this episode, though, is about cults.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  I hope it's on an improv cult.

• 7:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, but as we've already acknowledged, they are culty.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  They can be culty. I wouldn't call them cults.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  My experience was not with an improv cult. So this takes place in 94, when I was in my mid twenties. I was vulnerable to this because I had just gotten out of college a couple of years before. I was just lost. I had been really successful in the structure of college. I was so shy. I just had no idea how the world worked. So I was looking for something to latch on to. So one day I saw a sign at a bookstore saying they were having a meditation class. And I went and it was in this little room above the bookstore. And it turned out I was the only student. It was me and this teacher. We did the meditation for a bit and then he turned into my therapist for that day. And that was very attractive. Someone would listen to me.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  And he told me about his teacher who was going to be giving this free vegetarian dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown Boston.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  They always get you with the vegetarian dinner. We had somebody else on talking about this.

• 8:07Dax Shepard?

  If someone offers you a vegetarian dinner, just.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Run.

• 8:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, maybe not run, just.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  No, you run.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  He said his teacher was named Rama. To describe Rama a little bit. He's this tall guy with a Jew fro, as we say in my background. Blondish hair, very kind of awkward, but also very, very confident. That pulls people in.

• 8:28Dax Shepard?

  But not Indian, because you said his name was.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Well, his chosen name was Rama. And I think I can share the real name because it's all over the internet. The story has come out about him. It was Dr. Frederick Lenz. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of him.

• 8:40Dax Shepard?

  No, but a doctor.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  He had a PhD in literature and then he chose from then on to call himself doctor, which is already a little shady.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 8:49Dax Shepard?

  So he's going by this other name. He's not Indian. I thought Indian. I heard the name and I thought meditation, but no.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  He believed he was a reincarnation of St. Thomas More and Indian teachers and all kinds of people. It's never like I'm a reincarnation of a field worker.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I went and he gave a little talk. He was very into Carlos Castaneda and he wanted us to read those books.

• 9:11Dax Shepard?

  How many folks were at this initial free vegetarian dinner?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  I'd say a hundred.

• 9:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. There's some critical mass. If you show up somewhere to see a spiritual guide and there's three people, you're like, well, this guy's bunk. A hundred, you're like, okay.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Can't be that crazy if all these people are here.

• 9:26Dax Shepard?

  If you are starting a cult, stock it with some extras, even if you don't have that many followers. Maybe get some hourly folks to build out the audience.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  The thing that grabbed me was we meditated with him and he was sitting on a little stage in front of everyone and he asked us to keep our eyes open and look at him while we were meditating. When we started meditating with him, I started almost immediately seeing light coming out of him and his face started morphing into an old man and then a child and then a woman. And I would close my eyes and try and clear my vision and it just kept happening. And I thought, wow, there's something going on.

• 10:00Dax Shepard?

  That's quite a thing to observe. Are you not terrified?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  It was subtle, almost like you're having a dream.

• 10:06Dax Shepard?

  Or if you're on shrooms or something.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's what I was about to say. Oh, no. Oh, no.

• 10:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, hold on.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  But, you know, I could clear it. If I blinked my eyes, he was normal again. So I thought, you know, this is part of channeling other entities. It's not like he's actually changing into someone else. So it wasn't terrifying. It was more intriguing to me. The senior student of his that had invited me to that dinner said that there was going to be this 10 day meditation retreat coming up. And it sort of felt like it was an audition to be part of the cult in a way. They wanted people to have headshots and full body, especially women, to have pictures to submit as part of the application, which you have to wonder what those are for.

• 10:44Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  But I decided to go against better judgment and we went to this summer camp that they had rented for the 10 days. A lot of the time he wasn't there. It was his senior students leading meditation sessions and talking about Zen Master Rama. That's the full name he went by. And they said that they had seen him levitate and teleport and projecting light from his hands and. Apparently, if anyone criticized him, if he had any enemies, he could cause them to get cancer or be in a major car accident.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 11:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so he had a dark side.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Yes, very much. He also claimed to control the weather and pass through alternate dimensions and create and destroy universes. And I was just starting to get very skeptical at this point. We're on day three, four, and I'm like, I think I need to get out of here.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 11:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  And it did not feel like a place where you could just say, okay, bye, I'm not into this. They were kind of, you are staying for the 10 days. You committed to this no matter what. So he had shown up for one evening, but he's talking about Kundalini. The image is this snake that's curled up at the base of each person's spine. And when you raise the Kundalini energy, that snake is supposed to come up. So that night I had a dream that the Kundalini snake was not inside me, but was wrapping around me and trying to just kill me. And I woke up with terrible cramps. And I decided to kind of embellish the cramps into, I think, that my appendix. I have to get to a hospital. So I finally got them to call an ambulance, get me out of there, from which I called my family

• 12:16Speaker 02

  and just went away from this whole thing. But I forgot to mention, he always would talk about his dog, Vaiv. And apparently, he believed that he was one of 12 enlightened beings on the planet, and Vaiv was another one of the 12.

• 12:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so two of the 12 were accounted for between he and Vaiv.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he believed that Vaiv was the reincarnation of his spiritual teacher.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I'm glad he didn't try to heal you.

• 12:43Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm sure that was coming.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  No, I mean, like with the appendicitis.

• 12:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, oh, right.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Well, he was not actually present. He had just come in for a talk and jetted off. He had all these mansions and lots of cars. He had a whole collection of Porsches and Mercedes and Range Rovers. And his senior students got together for his birthday and bought him a Porsche. They claimed to have memory of technology from Atlantis.

• 13:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And Zen Master Rama said his form of Buddhism was what he called materialistic Buddhism.

• 13:16Dax Shepard?

  That's the kind of way need to practice.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Where it's okay to make a pile of money because that is a reflection of your spiritual progress.

• 13:23Dax Shepard?

  Once you left, did you keep following this person and what was happening?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  A number of years later, I read an article about how he died. But I did want to mention one thing I did see personally, which was that evening that he showed up. Somebody had asked him if he would be able to drink a whole bottle of hot sauce without any physical manifestation. You know how you would turn red and you would be in pain. So he did that. No big deal. So the guy had something, but I wouldn't say it was for the good of all.

• 13:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  But his death really nailed that this was not a sane person because his dog had passed away. And apparently Zen Master Rama could not handle being in the world without this dog.

• 14:03Dax Shepard?

  His master.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  So he committed suicide.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Wearing a Versace suit and the dog's collar and tags. He was found in the water by one of his mansions and he had over 150 valium in his system. And he made a suicide pact with one of his followers who happened to be a former model. He had sort of a harem going.

• 14:24Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Yeah, they're gonna have a harem. They're gonna have some nice cars.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so classic. So do we think he did drug you guys? I think it's hypnosis.

• 14:35Dax Shepard?

  Because you hadn't eaten the vegetarian meal prior to seeing all that, or had you?

• 14:39Speaker 02

  We had, actually. So there's always that possibility. But there were other times where I hadn't eaten something and was sitting in some of the students' presence and felt some interesting stuff. Wow, wild.

• 14:50Dax Shepard?

  Did you know anyone that stuck with that?

• 14:53Speaker 02

  No, I just got out of it and stayed away. There's a quote from a documentary I saw about people who win the Powerball that I think really fits with this kind of person. In the quote, it's about winning the lottery, but I think it's if you attain a lot of money and a lot of power, it's like pouring Miracle Crow on your character flaws. Ooh, yeah, that's good. That's really good.

• 15:15Dax Shepard?

  Those lottery documentaries fascinate the hell out of me. I've seen a couple. Talk about be careful what you wish for. There's almost no good stories in those.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  And the one that I saw years ago, it's called Lucky. There are some good stories and some negatives. Yeah, can't all be bad.

• 15:29Dax Shepard?

  No, I shouldn't say that. There's just an incredibly high rate of people filing for bankruptcy. There's a lot of stress with their family.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of suicide.

• 15:37Dax Shepard?

  It upticks a lot of things.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  I also have a joke for you guys. If you want a really bad taste joke about cults.

• 15:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, we love bad taste jokes.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Why aren't there very many popular jokes about Jonestown?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  I think it must have to do with Kool-Aid, but I don't know.

• 15:54Dax Shepard?

  What is it?

• 15:55Speaker 02

  The punchlines are too long.

• 15:57Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  I don't get it.

• 15:59Dax Shepard?

  Standing in line for the punch.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Oh, oh.

• 16:02Dax Shepard?

  Very literal.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Terrible.

• 16:04Dax Shepard?

  It's a pun? Well, Taj, this has been a delight, meeting you and hearing your story.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  I love you guys. Thank you.

• 16:11Dax Shepard?

  Thank you.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 16:13Dax Shepard?

  All right, take care.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  As someone who saw grandlady hands, grandma hands.

• 16:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  That's what she saw.

• 16:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, on shrooms and you stare at any given thing long enough, you'll just see some.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, things morph.

• 16:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think they definitely chalk that vegetarian meal. And to their credit, mushrooms are vegetarian.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Maybe that's why, because they can technically get away with it. It's technically legal.

• 16:42Dax Shepard?

  Mushroom medley. Hi, how are you?

• 16:45Speaker 03

  Good, how are you?

• 16:46Dax Shepard?

  Good. Is this a beautiful photo of you and your lover engaged in play on the beach?

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Engagement photos.

• 16:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's cute. It looks like you're either doing hacky sack or you could be doing the kid and play dance.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  I think I was kicking water at him.

• 16:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, because you're playful and you taunted him.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Seventeen years ago.

• 17:03Dax Shepard?

  You don't look nearly old enough to be engaged seventeen years ago.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  I'm thirty eight now. I was twenty.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Were you high school sweethearts?

• 17:11Speaker 03

  No, we met, well, this kind of comes into play. I grew up in the cult.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  So I did not know him in high school.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:19Dax Shepard?

  Kristen, where are you from?

• 17:20Speaker 03

  I'm from Northern California. You know Humboldt County? I think you've talked about it, actually.

• 17:24Dax Shepard?

  Golden Triangle or Green Triangle?

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Up where all the good weed and meth are.

• 17:30Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  I was almost born into it. My mom got married and I was in the religion from the time I was really tiny. So it wasn't something where I joined. Something where I was there as a child.

• 17:41Dax Shepard?

  And are you allowed to say the name of what the religion was?

• 17:44Speaker 03

  It was called Gospel Outreach. It's still around today. It's one you wouldn't have heard of. It's a lot smaller and they're pretty good at keeping themselves on the down low and not being too obvious about what's going on there. Their religious beliefs would be evangelical Lutheran type of thing. They believe that you are born full of sin and every day your old man, as they call it, needs to be killed so that your new man can come forth in Christ. So the way they do this is they try to like break you by just beating down on you. You have meetings as children. We would have circle meetings where you'd pick a person and you just verbally attack them until they finally get to their breaking point. And they would do weird things like make us wear signs about our shortcomings and wear those around school.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 18:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay, really quick. So this has huge overlap with this doc I saw about Synonym, which was this offshoot of sobriety a guy invented in Venice. And he had this thing called the game and it's how the group therapy worked and you attacked each other. And then all these people wanted to be a part of that organization that weren't drug addicts. And then all these civilians joined up in the Bay Area. I just wonder if there's any bleed out of this. Do you know the history of this religion?

• 19:02Speaker 03

  I don't know a whole lot. I know originally it started, the church that I went to was kind of in the Jesus movement and it was kicking hippies and helping them function in the world type of a thing. But then that church got associated with a church up in Olympia, Washington. And that's what I call the mother church where a lot of the very culty things came from in the way we lived life. So I think it's more from up there is where it all started. It's pretty small. It's not very connected with other things. There's a few churches, kind of in Oregon, Washington, and then the one in Northern California. So there's really not many. There's maybe five total that are really involved. And then the church has its own at school where we're all educated, quotes.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  We were taught by parents originally. None of them really had degrees or educations. They weren't teachers. Some of the classes we were self-taught. I didn't really learn science or anything like that. It was pretty basic.

• 20:06Dax Shepard?

  This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  What?

• 20:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it. No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the Grill Master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand-topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern, so every single bite gets cheese. And two pickles, side by side, so you're never in a pickle desert.

• 21:00Dax Shepard?

  Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Me too. That's my order. It's a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I love it. I didn't know they put so much effort that they did a star formation. I should have known because you can taste it when there's effort.

• 21:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the love. Don't tell anyone this, but I'll put two of them back.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:22Dax Shepard?

  One sitting.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  I'm not surprised.

• 21:24Dax Shepard?

  The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only. Only at McDonald's. For a limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery. We get support from No Bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post-summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 21:53Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole no bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid and I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 22:34Dax Shepard?

  And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines. And it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of the closet.

• 22:51Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is brought to you by Dell. Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 laptop with a beautiful design and cutting edge performance. It helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet with touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, and long lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds and Intel Core processors.

• 23:36Dax Shepard?

  It's fast, reliable and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities of XPS. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards. Fast free shipping, premium support and financing with flexible payment options. Plus you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 24:10Dax Shepard?

  This episode is supported by Helix.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode? Between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything. Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

• 24:24Dax Shepard?

  It really is the foundation, and I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast, it's only like two minutes, and they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip, it's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds recently. That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.

• 24:58Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 25:01Dax Shepard?

  Look, they've got over 20 mattress models, so whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around all night, there's one built for you. Plus free shipping and a 365 night happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired, and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic, the experts agree.

• 25:22Dax Shepard?

  Right now, Helix is running their Black Friday sale with up to 30% off. Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. helixsleep.com/armchair.

• 25:49Dax Shepard?

  How many parishioners were at the church and then how many kids were you in school with?

• 25:53Speaker 03

  It's grown, so they always say that their church growth plan is be fruitful and multiply. They almost never let people come in from the outside, but they just have lots of kids. And then they kind of intermarry and eventually that's going to get interesting. They send women to the other churches so that they kind of have more of a pool to choose from.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  I was a student teacher at a very young time there in the school. And then when I was fifteen, they said, okay, time to be done. Go take your California high school proficiency examination. So I went and took it and I failed. And then I took it a while later, once they offered it again, after some studying and I passed. I was sixteen then. And then at that point, I just taught full time in the school. I was never paid, it was all free. I didn't have any really education to speak of, but I was one of the teachers, which was somewhat of an esteemed position. You wanted to be a teacher. As a woman in that environment, your job is to be a wife and a mother. There's nothing else for you. You shouldn't pursue a career. No one should go to college. College is considered to almost be evil. Getting married is a really huge thing. You have to be recommended for a marriage.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  You have to attain a certain level of status. And the last thing you would want is to be old and alone. The marriages were somewhat arranged. You could express interest in a person as a man if you wanted to. The men who leave the church might say no, they might say yes, they might say, look at someone else. You also might just go to the men and say, who should I marry? And they would tell you who you should marry. As a woman, you do have the right to say no to a marriage offer, but it will probably be your last offer. Oh my god, this is wild.

• 27:29Dax Shepard?

  And is there any visible impropriety? There's no multiple marriages happening?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  No plural marriage. It's all one on one and it's all of age. So they're winning there.

• 27:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes. Kudos.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  They're keeping it legal. They look really good from the outside and they do well at that. People are always very impressed. How do I get to be a part of this? This is so amazing. You guys are doing such good things. Your kids are so well behaved.

• 27:51Dax Shepard?

  How many boys your age were in your school?

• 27:54Speaker 03

  So my school, the one in Eureka, California, was very small. So at the time I was there, it was only maybe forty kids in the school. So in my age group, I had five boys. Very few options, unless I was to be sent to another church.

• 28:08Dax Shepard?

  And did you have a crush on any of them?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  It's a really, really sinful thing to admit that you would have a crush on somebody. So you really have to kind of suppress that part of yourself. Be very careful not to be seen, interacting too heavily with boys. You don't ever touch in any kind of a way or sit too close. If they think you might like somebody, it's not gonna work out well for you generally. You need to leave that to the church.

• 28:30Dax Shepard?

  And how much natural questioning did you have?

• 28:32Speaker 03

  I was pretty bought in. This is my life. This is everything I know. I've got to do the right thing. Leaving the church is the ultimate worst thing you could do. And so it was really scary. I was kind of doing what they wanted me to do. The other thing that's interesting about the school day is we did school as in math language till noon. And then from noon on, we did only music. We recorded and produced CDs. I think Wabi Wab has some pictures. Oh, wow. And it's seventeen and a picture of me and that boy.

• 29:02Dax Shepard?

  For the listener, you're on stage. It's a good sized stage. We've got a lot of huge pictures of biblical paintings behind you being put on a projector. Now that I see the stage, I'm assuming the music portion is like the attractive part of the religion. Like if you were to observe this, you'd be like, oh yeah, they're having so much fun.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they're not trying to recruit, which I find interesting. Well, recruiting can get dicey because people aren't usually willing to give everything if they didn't grow up in that environment. There's going to be some inherent skepticism. It'd be tough. And then people will question things.

• 29:37Dax Shepard?

  Were you guys inviting non-church members to witness the music?

• 29:43Speaker 03

  We would go perform in front of large audiences. We would do like Christmas performances. The CD that I sent the song and the pictures, we did box fourth cantata. We did very like intricate, difficult music and got pretty good because it's literally everything we do. It's pretty insane and comical to me to listen to because it's like a whole different person. So how I left, I wasn't the highest status, but I was doing all right, but I was very bought in. And then one day my dad sat my whole family down in the living room. There's seven of us kids and I'm the oldest and I was nineteen at the time. And he said, we're leaving the church. Total shock to us. We all just started sobbing. We were devastated. It's our whole life.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  We don't even know people outside the church. So it's like the worst thing that could happen to us. And I remember he said, we could stay for like another. Month until some performance happened with music. So we had to go back to school and my friends were crying in the grocery store, crying till they'd throw up. Like, it's the worst thing that could happen. We went through the last little bit and we left. But the day that he told me we were leaving, I called someone who was like a mentor, a woman who was higher up as far as women can be. And she said to me, how much do you love the church? Do you love the church enough to leave your family? And I remember that I thought, yes. And I said, maybe, I don't know.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  The next day she took back her offer and said, I talked to my husband and he said, I need to stay out of it. Cause she had mentioned maybe me coming and living with them. And she was like, never mind, you stay with your family. And I was devastated by that. And I found out later that my dad had gone and threatened the men of the church and said, don't fuck with my family.

• 31:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Don't try to come after my kids.

• 31:27Dax Shepard?

  When your dad told you you were all leaving, did he give an explanation as to why?

• 31:32Speaker 03

  I don't remember a lot of that day, but I know that he had gone to the men of the church and said, I don't believe that we're doing things biblically here. I think there's some real issues and we should make some changes. And they said, we don't care. You need to either do what we're doing or get out. And then when we left the church, to me, it felt a lot like if you've moved to a different country that was English speaking. Like, yeah, we speak the same language, but I don't really get your humor, your culture. I don't really understand what you're saying. I was really shocked by boys just being even mildly flirtatious. It was very alarming.

• 32:07Dax Shepard?

  You were clutching your pearls a lot?

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Exactly. Oh, my gosh. It was really scary and lonely. It was so hard. But I met friends and gradually have become the person I am now. It was a very long evolution because there's a lot of boundaries in your head that you might not even realize you have. Like the pursuing a career, I really didn't feel like I could pursue a career. And I remember one day early in my husband and I's marriage, I said something about one day, it'd be cool to go to nursing school. And he said, you should do it. And I was like, so shocked by his response because I was like, wait, I could do it. It just didn't seem possible to me. I did eventually go to college. I was thirty when I took my first ever college class. I had nervous shits in between every class.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  It was so scary, but I have a bachelor's degree and I'm a ER nurse.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  It's so cool to look back. And it's a big part because I had people in my life who just supported me and wanted me to be a full person. And my husband was a huge part of that.

• 33:09Dax Shepard?

  Any foreign objects? What's the term?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Rectal.

• 33:12Dax Shepard?

  Rectal foreign objects?

• 33:14Speaker 03

  There's a cucumber, Gatorade bottle.

• 33:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Gatorade.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  A kid with a lipstick.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Did you watch The Pit?

• 33:23Speaker 03

  Yes, I watched The Pit. Hands down, the most accurate medical show of everything.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  The one thing they never get right is nurses are so underrepresented. We're doing everything. The docs put in the orders, we do it.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:36Dax Shepard?

  Really quick, did dad find his way to another fringy religion?

• 33:40Speaker 03

  He is a pastor and he has a small church.

• 33:44Dax Shepard?

  And what about your siblings? Did they transition well into the worldly world?

• 33:48Speaker 03

  We've all kind of had a hard time in different ways. They're all doing good, but it's been a struggle. Mentally, it's a lot to get through. Locally, some of them were a lot younger. I was the oldest. So some of them had much shorter periods of time that they lived in the religion and they were mostly outside. So that helps a ton.

• 34:04Dax Shepard?

  Does it diminish your confidence in your ability to evaluate reality?

• 34:09Speaker 03

  To some degree, there's things I have expectations of people, how they're gonna treat me, how they're gonna act. And I think that's been most poignant in my marriage where he'll say something pretty benign. And I'm like, why are you trying to attack me? Why are you coming after me? But I just expect that. So we've had to definitely work through some things.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  To me, there is nothing more impressive than shedding an old life and starting fresh.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 34:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Do you like Megan Phelps Roper? Have you heard her talk at all?

• 34:37Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 34:38Dax Shepard?

  She was in Westboro Baptist, that wild Baptist church that holds the terrible signs up at funerals. Yeah, she wrote a book.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Family. I'm just in awe of people who can do that.

• 34:50Dax Shepard?

  Me too.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  It's very hard. Well, can my husband come say hi?

• 34:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of course. Hi handsome husband.

• 34:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, there's a cat in the mix.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  My daughter talked me into one and then now we have four.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  Kind of got duped on that deal.

• 35:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think that's what happens with one cat. They're like mogwai. All of a sudden you have five. It's like they got wet.

• 35:13Speaker 04

  They worked their way in there. I'm glad you guys got to meet my wife. She's a huge fan. She's definitely a full package. She'll go to work and save a couple of lives, come home, paint the house.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Oh my.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Sing the kids to bed.

• 35:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's good to get someone that really was like brainwashed and had to do a lot of stuff because then just doing normal stuff feels like nothing. That's like a hack.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  I had a pretty good inside track on it because I worked with a lot of people she went to church with for about 11 years. So I was probably as close as you can get to the inside circle without being on the inside.

• 35:53Dax Shepard?

  You were well versed.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  That's helpful.

• 35:55Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's so nice meeting both of you guys.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Thanks for sharing. Nice to meet you.

• 35:59Dax Shepard?

  All right, take care.

• 36:02Dax Shepard?

  Hello, is this Anna?

• 36:04Speaker 05

  It is.

• 36:05Dax Shepard?

  Hi Anna, nice to meet you. I love your floral wallpaper.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  Thank you. I'm in a B and Bs.

• 36:11Dax Shepard?

  And what state are you visiting?

• 36:13Speaker 05

  I am in Toulouse, France. I live in Portland, Oregon, but I'm visiting a friend who's getting married who lives in Toulouse. She is the one who recommended this prompt to me and we were in a cult together.

• 36:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, together. That's how you met?

• 36:25Speaker 05

  Well, we were children, but it feels very full circle to me. I just arrived today to see her.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Oh, how lovely.

• 36:31Dax Shepard?

  This may or may not shock you, but of the three people we've spoken with, two are from Portland.

• 36:37Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting. Yeah, I feel like cults are kind of a west coast deal.

• 36:40Dax Shepard?

  I do too. Yeah. Northern Cal we had and then now two Portland.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Wasn't the Rajneeshis, that was Oregon too.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  That was eastern Oregon. Yeah.

• 36:49Dax Shepard?

  The OG. Okay.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  The OG.

• 36:52Dax Shepard?

  The original guru.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  No, Oregon.

• 36:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that too. Okay, Anna, please tell us your experience.

• 37:01Speaker 05

  To be fair, to Portland, Oregon, I was in California.

• 37:03Dax Shepard?

  We'll take it.

• 37:04Speaker 05

  We were all up and down the coast, my group that I grew up in. I don't know if you've ever heard of a group called The Assembly? Also called the Gift Tacus Assembly. Not Assembly of God. Thinking Assembly of God, that's a different group.

• 37:16Dax Shepard?

  No, I've never heard this, but I like the name. It already is ominous.

• 37:19Speaker 05

  Yes, so the assembly doesn't exist anymore, but it was a Christian cult, basically. A Protestant church that started in the seventies where the leader just wanted to go back to basics, be really minimal. People didn't wear makeup, didn't dress up too much, people kind of lived communally. I think it was kind of nice in the beginning. Everyone just sort of participated, you know, sang a cappella. And it was just like, forget all of that worldly stuff. It had a heyday in the seventies. It started in Southern California, but it was all over. There are branches in Canada, Mexico, England, a lot of places in South America.

• 37:49Dax Shepard?

  And did it have a founding charismatic leader?

• 37:51Speaker 05

  Georgia and Betty Giftakis are guiding light. They were divinely inspired as far as we were concerned. We talk about cult. At first you think it's gonna be like fun and sensationalist and wild, but it's actually just sad. And you know, a lot of stories are really grim and a lot of them are about abuse. But I wanted something that had a little more sparkle to it.

• 38:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  So my story is about a pseudoscientific medical device that my family used that kind of caught on in our very insular group. It's called the Zapper. And the Zapper was supposed to heal you by giving you a very light sustained electric shock.

• 38:22Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  And I want to be clear, this wasn't preached from the pulpit, like the Zapper will heal you. But it was a kind of insular environment where we didn't have any other friends and just weird fads would take place. And if someone of influence brought in a certain fad, one time it was a planner.

• 38:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, like a Franklin planner.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  It's almost like an MLM.

• 38:39Speaker 05

  That's funny because we actually did a lot of MLMs together and just sort of marketed to each other, basically.

• 38:54Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set, looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  I love matching pajamas. I'm literally gonna be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season. Because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening, the same Skims pajama set I've been living in. Are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate.

• 39:27Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Cozy.

• 39:29Dax Shepard?

  Hmm. It's so great how Skims has sets for everyone too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleep long sleeve set.

• 39:46Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  It is so comfortable, very chic too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multi-purpose this.

• 39:57Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  And look super cute.

• 39:59Dax Shepard?

  Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select armchair expert in the dropdown menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.

• 40:27Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Squarespace. So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things, they all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with. And then at some point, they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from I'm working on something to here's what I made. Rob went through the exact same thing, building our site on Squarespace. And what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired someone, built in SEO so people can find you, email campaigns, scheduling analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools.

• 41:12Dax Shepard?

  And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is. If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it, Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less dramatic. Head to squarespace.com/dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every family has that one holiday tradition nobody actually enjoys, but everyone keeps doing because stopping it would feel like a federal offense. For me, it was a specific meal situation that I will not name because my family listens. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, am I doing this because I love it? Or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yes, and that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays, who we're supposed to see, what it's supposed to look like. And when you start unpacking that with a therapist, you realize half of your stress is coming from rules you didn't even write.

• 42:13Dax Shepard?

  This is where BetterHelp can be a great resource during the holidays. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences, which means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recs.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  I just love therapy. I've been avoiding it recently, or not avoiding it, but I was like, oh, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. I haven't canceled, canceled, canceled, but then I-

• 42:40Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, because then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh my God. And just thank God, thank God for her. Yeah.

• 42:48Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans, with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/dax. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash dax.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  So to set the scene, because I sometimes go down a dark rabbit hole trying to explain the assembly. I made a kind of list of our fears and loves, which I'll share with you.

• 43:30Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 43:30Speaker 05

  If the assembly is a person, the assembly loves abstinence, all-day, all-night meetings, chores, which are also called stewardships, communal living, door-to-door witnessing, fellowships, which are like really lame parties. Our leader, George Katakis- Homeschooling, the Left Behind franchise, modesty, multi-level marketing, street preaching, spankings, tithing, and of course, the zapper Z. If you have a Z and you have an alphabetical list, you gotta put it in there. So these are our fears: abortion, bikinis, evolution, government, homosexuality.

• 43:59Dax Shepard?

  When you'd go to church or you'd see the service, how tied to Christianity was it? Was the Bible still being primarily used? Or had he deviated so much that a lot of what you were learning had nothing to do with the Bible?

• 44:12Speaker 05

  In a way, we were trying to be so strict and like, hew so closely to Scripture. We thought all the other churches were kind of too diluted. But you know the verse about straining a gnat and swallowing a camel?

• 44:22Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 44:23Speaker 05

  There's a verse that's about foolish people who would strain a gnat and swallow a camel, meaning focusing on the real details, and then swallowing something enormous without even considering it. I mean, that reference is not the right audience.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  No, it makes sense. It got so granular that the bigger picture was crazy.

• 44:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, the thing that made it a high-control group was that we believed that our leader and people closely associated with him were receiving divine inspiration. If someone suggested something to you, like, you just sort of did it. It wasn't a suggestion, it was, "This is my way of being closer to God."

• 44:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So what was novel about the Mormons is that the parishioners could receive revelation. That was the appealing part, as I understand it. But in this sect, they could at least receive revelations?

• 45:08Speaker 05

  Yes, my family left when I was probably like, 13. I wish I had like, the adult sort of eye, but my memories are mostly just being incredibly bored. When I look back on it, it feels as though a lot of the revelations were kind of ad hoc, and they're kind of convenient.

• 45:20Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's like Joseph Smith's revelations that a man should have multiple wives once he was busted having sex with a young woman that lived next door. That's interesting timing of that revelation.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know if I would call it a revelation, but by the time I was conscious and participating, one of our big things was we didn't... Do mainstream music. We didn't watch film and television. We didn't even sing in harmony. What? They were worried. There was a lot of pop Christian music at the time and people would get caught up in the music and the emotion and sort of lose the message. Oh. So that way we were focused on the message. But yeah, let's see, our fears, government, homosexuality, eastern mysticism, we were like, no can do. Feminism, no. Public schools and their agendas, mainstream music, makeup. We were so scared of Satan worshippers. We never met any. We were talking about them all the time. Secular holidays, we didn't participate in.

• 46:08Dax Shepard?

  Great. And really quickly, on the zapper, I'm guessing it was a pre-existing product that this was an off-label use for? Or did someone invent this thing within the church?

• 46:18Speaker 05

  The person who claimed to have invented it was like a quack doctor who wasn't part of our church. Her name was Hilda Clark. She's also the author of a quack book called The Cure for All Diseases. She was investigated for like medical malpractice. I later learned and moved to Mexico because they were going to close down her wellness center in California. Her whole thing was, well, all diseases, including cancer and AIDS, are caused by a parasite in the body. So you just need to electrocute the parasite and then you'll be all better.

• 46:45Dax Shepard?

  So simple. It's crazy none of these doctors thought of this.

• 46:47Speaker 05

  Well, they just want to keep you sick. Oh, sure. If you commit to like life in the assembly, you're asked to push away your friends. You're going to meetings every day. This group of people down in Fullerton, they're just always sick and no doctors could tell them what was wrong with them. They were fatigued. It's another day with headaches. Sometimes it was stomach ache. They wouldn't have any energy. Like they just weren't well. George and Betty would give them like a special diet they would follow and that wouldn't work. We started to call it Fullerton disease. When I hear this as an adult, I think Fullerton disease is probably depression. When you're a kid in the assembly, it sucked, right? Because you're in meetings all day. Like you're getting like spankings all the time. So many rules. You don't celebrate Christmas. You're just like, this sucks. But the best thing in the world was to be sick. Or someone in your family is sick. Everyone's looking after you. You don't have to participate.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  Oh, God. This is like producing Munchausen.

• 47:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  It's the late 90s. The apocalypse is kind of around the corner. We're big into Y2K. We needed like our best soldiers on the ground. But people coming down with Fullerton disease. So enter this amazing device that's going to solve what the doctors.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  And diet can't. Suddenly we're all zapping around the late nineties. Imagine a black plastic box, maybe around the size of your face or smaller, with a little light on the top. Inside, it's got batteries and wires and stuff, and it's got an on off switch. Wires are coming out of it. The wires kind of lead to these two copper handles. And you're meant to hold on to the handles and just turn the thing and get an electric shock. But work up to twenty minutes. If it wasn't working, you could get a paper towel wet and put that over and get like a little more of a shock.

• 48:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. You could juice it up a little bit.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:16Dax Shepard?

  I'm thinking of basically the lie detector device that's been rebranded within Scientology where you hold the handles and you get a E-meter. You did it?

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did it at the Celebrity Center.

• 48:27Dax Shepard?

  You went to the Celebrity Center?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  You don't know this story?

• 48:31Dax Shepard?

  No. I don't know the story either.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  What?

• 48:34Dax Shepard?

  How could we have done all this Scientology? Wait, you should be a caller.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  I wasn't joining. We had had an improv show at UCB.

• 48:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, across the street.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Sorry to commandeer.

• 48:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but this needs immediate attention.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  The Scientology Center had the recruitment day and it was exciting and they had a fair. And we were like, we're gonna go.

• 48:52Dax Shepard?

  As a bit.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  As a bit, but also what are they gonna say?

• 48:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  What is this like?

• 48:57Dax Shepard?

  Reconnaissance.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. We all went to this movie theater and there was a woman there who was in charge of us. She was very odd, I would say. And then we watched this crazy movie about Scientology. It's not produced considering the people who are involved in Scientology.

• 49:12Dax Shepard?

  They have a TV station too.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  They're gonna have Tom act in the movie at the very least.

• 49:17Dax Shepard?

  Famous writers have been involved.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. Then they separated us all. And then we had to do the thing with the hands. And then they told us.

• 49:24Dax Shepard?

  They asked you some questions?

• 49:25Speaker 01

  They asked questions. And it is how much you're holding, how much you're not. It's very primitive psychology for like a lie detector test.

• 49:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's a polygraph.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but even way more basic than that. Anyway.

• 49:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so it sounds like a similar setup.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  Our thing did even less than what you're describing. They didn't even like produce any kind of results or anything.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Well, this didn't either. They tell you a result.

• 49:47Dax Shepard?

  So you were doing the zapper twenty minutes a day?

• 49:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, we were zapping a lot. You know, if you felt like you were coming down with something, you might zap or just kind of proactively you could zap. In my head, I associated it with like a punishment. I remember my parents being like, go zap.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Your parasite was acting up.

• 50:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would think it was like the parasites are out of control. My mom, she likes to be active. She can't just sit and hold something for 20 minutes. That's torture to her. She was a seamstress, so she wanted to be like working at her sewing table. I remember there's a mom used to take the copper rods and just like put them down the back of her pants.

• 50:20Speaker 05

  They needed to make skin contact, but it didn't matter what's kind of skin.

• 50:24Dax Shepard?

  Anally.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  My dad notices this. He's an engineer. He's got his own shop where he works and with some industrial tools. So he goes away and like makes his own modification where instead of the two round handles, which are kind of uncomfortable to put down the back of her pants. He makes these two curved butt cheeks shaped sort of thing.

• 50:42Dax Shepard?

  You know, like big spoons.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Then you could just put them down.

• 50:46Dax Shepard?

  This is madness.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  This is how he's spending his time.

• 50:50Dax Shepard?

  Someone knocks on the door and walks into this scene. OEM, this is an original manufacturing. This is a hybrid. To do what? To kill the parasite?

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 51:00Speaker 05

  The weirdest bit is now if someone else in the family is using it, you know, it's like been down my mom's.

• 51:06Dax Shepard?

  You've got on your cheeks or something. They've been on mom's bottom cheeks. At 13, how do we get out of this?

• 51:11Speaker 05

  My mom decided she was going to leave. She's not like gonna leave the group. She's gonna leave my dad. She's leaving everything. She got like another apartment. She bought a car and disappeared away to this other life. Just to get out. When you live in this kind of environment, you don't know who you are or what your favorite color is. You can't have a conversation. You just crack.

• 51:29Dax Shepard?

  Did she stay in the same town as you?

• 51:31Speaker 05

  So we lived in San Luis Obispo and she went to Atascadero.

• 51:35Dax Shepard?

  I know Atascadero very well.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Is it close?

• 51:38Speaker 05

  It's the same county, so she didn't go very far.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, she was also probably in perimenopause and her hormones.

• 51:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you think this is on all fours?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  It's a little bit all fours book.

• 51:48Speaker 05

  She leaves and then after about a year, my dad decides to officially remove the family from the group because he was just kind of seeing them for who they really were.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, ruined his family.

• 51:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. How was this celibate command working out? Is there celibacy within the marriage?

• 52:04Speaker 05

  Oh, not within the marriage. Sex is only okay in this really specific context. But there was this idea of no sex outside of marriage. You don't know what's supposed to have crushes. You didn't really date. You weren't really supposed to like. Have desire. You're just obeying God's command.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Oh, this is wild. There's so many.

• 52:20Dax Shepard?

  There's a lot of these. I know.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  There's so many of these.

• 52:23Dax Shepard?

  You're not thinking when you're driving through San Luis Obispo. That's the home of Cal Poly.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  And that these engineers are involved. I know that's a stereotype, but I guess I imagine how could an engineer get trapped into this?

• 52:35Speaker 05

  It's the straining a nap swallowing a camel thing. You get so focused on engineering the zapper that you're not thinking about why am I doing this?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:44Dax Shepard?

  Do we really think George in Fullerton has all the answers? And he never got busted having multiple lovers? Most of these founders.

• 52:50Speaker 05

  He definitely did have multiple liaisons. I heard a lot of allegations against him.

• 52:55Dax Shepard?

  To be honest, why else deal with all the obligations of having cult followers if you're not having sex with them? Like, what is the reward?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Power.

• 53:02Dax Shepard?

  What's the point of power if not sex with hot people?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  For you, but for a lot of people.

• 53:07Dax Shepard?

  I mean, that's what power is about, really.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  It wasn't totally monetarily driven, but the tithing, you give a percentage, sometimes like 10% of your earnings to the church. That's all going to George.

• 53:18Dax Shepard?

  Quickly to tie this bow on it, your friend's wedding. So she was a member of the church and she presumably left as well?

• 53:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, her family left a little bit earlier, under the guise of, oh, we have to move away.

• 53:29Dax Shepard?

  Tasked at Arrow. To Moral Bay.

• 53:33Speaker 05

  Exactly. I'm gonna see her get married on Saturday. I'm gonna see a lot of old family friends from the assembly days.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Wow. Oh, that'll be such an interesting reunion.

• 53:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what a group to get together with. Well, Anna, nice meeting you. Thanks for telling us that story.

• 53:48Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Have a great trip.

• 53:50Dax Shepard?

  Bye.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 53:53Dax Shepard?

  Is this Francesca?

• 53:54Speaker 06

  This is me. I'm so nervous.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Oh, don't be nervous.

• 53:57Dax Shepard?

  You have a very cute sweater on. And do you go by something shorter than Francesca? Cause I can go all the way with Francesca, but do you have like a nickname?

• 54:04Speaker 06

  People call me Fran, or my dad calls me Frankie.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that. That's so cute.

• 54:10Speaker 06

  I used to hate it, but I like it now.

• 54:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What age do you think you get to when you finally start liking all this cute stuff your parents?

• 54:18Speaker 06

  When you feel like they might die.

• 54:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you gotta wait that long?

• 54:21Speaker 06

  Once they've died. Yeah, once or they're getting close. Then you love it.

• 54:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:27Speaker 06

  Oh, did you make a fort for us? I did, and I've really found my center in here because I was really nervous. And it feels good just to sit here in this light dark. Cozy.

• 54:37Dax Shepard?

  Do you do any breathing exercises or anything?

• 54:39Speaker 06

  I tried, but they aren't working.

• 54:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay, where are you? Are you in Portland, Oregon?

• 54:44Speaker 06

  No, I'm in Big Sky, Montana. Oh.

• 54:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you've got a cult story, Francesca, Fran, Frankie.

• 54:51Speaker 06

  I sure do.

• 54:53Dax Shepard?

  What if I said Frankie and she just started bawling?

• 54:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're not her dad. But I want you to be.

• 54:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, good. You just need to ask and then I'll officially say yes.

• 55:01Speaker 06

  He's everyone's dad. No, you wanna see my dad? That's my dad. Oh, that's a sweet picture. So if you're wondering who joined the cult, it was these people. Oh.

• 55:13Dax Shepard?

  They're so cute. They look like they're on either a Seals and Croft or a Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon album cover.

• 55:19Speaker 06

  I feel like they're in Italy.

• 55:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, are they in Italy in that photo?

• 55:23Speaker 06

  I don't think so. I'm guessing they're in Texas.

• 55:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 55:27Speaker 06

  Have you watched The Pit? I haven't seen The Pit.

• 55:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so those gorgeous young people, they found their way into something. What was it?

• 55:36Speaker 06

  They met, these two people, their names were Trina and Steven. They met them at a rebirth thing seminar. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that. No. I don't really know what it is either. It's just where you practice redoing your birth. It was the early eighties. Wait, you're reenacting your own birth? So that if you had any trauma coming in, you can get rid of it. They joined Trina and Steven because Trina believed she could trans a spirit through her body. A dead trans medium is what she was called. So she would leave her body and then the spirit would take over. And that's what I did on Sundays, pretty much from when I was born until I was eighteen. Oh, my god.

• 56:17Dax Shepard?

  You'd go see Trina channel spirits?

• 56:20Speaker 06

  So they collected a bunch of people. It was called the Collective. It was an actual collective, so they all shared money and everything. But by the time I was born, it was not so much a collective. Everyone had their own money.

• 56:32Dax Shepard?

  And this was in Texas?

• 56:33Speaker 06

  It was in Arizona. We went to trance every Sunday. It was like a dimly lit room. Everyone entered. And we would sing, which was my favorite part. It was the only part that made sense to me. So we would sing a song and then she would meditate and then the spirit would come through. Dr. Duran, who was a 14th century doctor. And basically he would say a sermon and then he would open up for questions. So people basically sought advice from him.

• 57:03Dax Shepard?

  How many folks were in attendance normally?

• 57:05Speaker 06

  A hundred at its peak. When I was growing up, it was probably more like 50.

• 57:10Dax Shepard?

  And was it held in a church or what kind of space?

• 57:14Speaker 06

  We had this trance room that was lacked out, no windows or anything. Cause she needed darkness, but it wasn't so dark that you couldn't see her. And it's so hard because this was real for all of us, but it wasn't obviously. But I grew up in it, so it was all I knew.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:30Dax Shepard?

  I just remember being a kid sitting in church and going like, I don't know. Were you having any battle?

• 57:35Speaker 06

  Later on, when I got older, but no, they created chaos so that you just wanted to be a part of this family. So Trina and Stephen had kids and grandkids. And there was a hierarchy. They were treated better than my family. It was all based on money and I realize that now. They targeted people who had rich families and my mom had wealthy parents. My dad didn't, but my parents weren't giving any money because my grandparents wouldn't provide. So they were basically just treated like the lowest on the totem pole. My mom and dad didn't ever have a chance.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  I'm surprised they weren't like, we gotta get out of here. No one's even being nice to us.

• 58:15Dax Shepard?

  If you can't climb the ladder.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's the incentive?

• 58:19Speaker 06

  We were told that we are the closest to God because we're with the spirit in this lifetime. So it did have some like Buddhist principles. We believed in reincarnation and we believe that. This life was our last because we were with the spirit. So we were special. I see.

• 58:38Dax Shepard?

  Was it Christianity linked or no?

• 58:40Speaker 06

  Not really. We would make fun of it a little bit. So trance, you never knew what you were gonna get. Sometimes it was him like, oh my God, you guys need to lighten up and have a party. Literally the spirit talking through her was telling us this. Or he would rip people to shreds. And then after trance, sometimes there were like processes where the adults would all get together and they'd all drink alcohol and just like rip each other. A new one.

• 59:05Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 59:06Speaker 06

  I wasn't there. I was too young. But I was usually babysitting the kids. By the time they got home, you could tell they had been crying and just unregulated.

• 59:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. Okay, this again is like the game. This kind of group participation therapy where you call out each other's character defects.

• 59:23Speaker 06

  People would make stuff up just to like get the attention off of them.

• 59:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that was what was happening in the game is like you want to sit down with the gun loaded to direct at someone else to get the heat off yourself. So you're like incentivized.

• 59:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was pretty bad. There were good parts, like growing up in Tonno Village. I had a bunch of friends and it was dirt roads and it was a good place to grow up. But it was pretty toxic. We had our own school. You weren't encouraged to go out and get a degree or anything. You were encouraged to just stay small. Service was a big thing. People who weren't even qualified would be teaching at the school with no pay.

• 59:59Dax Shepard?

  Free bad teaching. This is what we offer.

• 1:00:02Speaker 06

  Rethink teachers who do get paid don't get paid enough.

• 1:00:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 06

  I was so afraid of everybody. It was so scary. But also I wanted their approval so bad. But my dad was always kind of like half in, half out. He didn't actually want to go. He did it for my mom. And so when I was seven, they divorced. And he kind of left the community. But even before that, he was just painted as a terrible person. Because he didn't want to be there and that showed. I knew my dad was a good guy. I loved him, but people would talk crap about him in front of me.

• 1:00:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's the cruelest thing you can do to a kid, yeah.

• 1:00:43Speaker 06

  That was part of the problem with trance was you were like asking a question and then you're airing all of your shit in front of everybody and in front of the kids.

• 1:00:52Dax Shepard?

  Do you know what it was that your mom was getting out of it?

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  At first, she wanted a community. And then they end up creating chaos to where it's like, if you leave the community, you're leaving all of your friends, your family, you'll lose everything. And that's what they do. They make it so that you can't leave. There were people who left, but it sounds easy to just pick up and leave, but it's not. You don't have anything.

• 1:01:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, starting from scratch.

• 1:01:17Dax Shepard?

  How far away did your dad move?

• 1:01:19Speaker 06

  He just moved down to Phoenix area. So I would still see him, but not very often. So later on, when I was 11 years old, my mom decided to get a boyfriend who did not want to be in the community. It was just kind of looked down upon to have a boyfriend at all. And he was a Vietnam vet. He was sort of abusive, so I had to live with him for a little bit. Basically, my mom was shunned because she wanted to be with this man who didn't want to be in the community. So there was a point around that time where I was also shunned. The whole community was having Thanksgiving at Trina and Steven's house. And I wasn't allowed to go. I like met with my sister and she's like, Fran, you're not allowed.

• 1:02:01Speaker 06

  My oldest sister, I'm the youngest of five, but she was my person when my mom wasn't around.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Why was she allowed to go?

• 1:02:09Speaker 06

  Because she had her own life. She actually got pregnant at 16. That was part of it too. You get married and you have babies, assigned marriages. She had a baby at 16 because they told her, don't wear a condom, it hurts.

• 1:02:21Dax Shepard?

  Hmm. How old was the dude?

• 1:02:24Speaker 06

  He was only a couple of years older than her, but they ended up getting married and then torn apart. Because one of the leader's daughters wanted to marry the guy she was with.

• 1:02:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:02:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, my sister's the real MVP. She's the firstborn child of the cult and I say it shows.

• 1:02:44Speaker 06

  So she told me I can't go. They're mad at my mom and I was like heartbroken about that. So later on, I'm going to feed my horses and I'm walking past Trina and Steven's houses, which is where everyone was gathered. And my friend Scout came outside and she's like Fran, what are you doing innocently? She's like, come on, we're all having a party. And I was like, okay. So I go up the stairs and I get abused by Steven Camp, who is the leader. He just screamed at me in front of everyone, told me that I can't be there. I need to go home. And I'm 11 years old. Oh, my God. What kind of per- oh, my God.

• 1:03:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what a fucking coward.

• 1:03:23Speaker 06

  Oh, he was a scary, scary guy. I don't even remember, to be honest, what I did after that. It was pretty traumatizing. So I had moved out of the house because of the guy she was with. So I moved in with my sister for a little while and then I was gonna move back. I was told this later, but Paul, her boyfriend, didn't want me to move back in. And so he asked her for a divorce. And then after that, my mom took her own life.

• 1:03:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my goodness. What a horrific end.

• 1:03:57Speaker 06

  You've really been through the wringer. After my mom died, it was kind of like my family was finally in it. We were finally treated better, which is just absolutely crazy.

• 1:04:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they decided to extend some compassion in the wake of that?

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  Or did they feel guilty? I think they felt guilty. Basically, she just lost her whole support system because the women in the family all stopped talking to her. And then the guy that she was doing it for wanted to leave her. And he was just a terrible person.

• 1:04:27Dax Shepard?

  What age were you when that happened?

• 1:04:29Speaker 06

  I was 11.

• 1:04:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:04:32Speaker 06

  It was rough. I don't blame them for it, but... I do think my mom dying did shatter the glass a little, had people questioning, what the fuck are we doing here? And then I didn't actually leave myself because I was young, but I ended up living with multiple different families, plus my sister, and it just got worse. Once I was living with the cult leader's daughter and they were really sweet. Like, everyone's a victim to this, I think, including their children. I had a boyfriend at fifteen. I went to trance one time and I got called a whore in trance.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 1:05:09Speaker 06

  The spirit called me a whore.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Was that boyfriend part of this?

• 1:05:13Speaker 06

  No, he wasn't.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  When you were around other people, were you like embarrassed to talk about it?

• 1:05:19Speaker 06

  No, it was kind of a joke like, oh, you guys live in Tono Village, you guys are a part of that cult. And we're like, yeah, you guys think it's a cult, it's not. I listened to a recent recording of a trance, which it's the only one I have. I don't know where they all are because they recorded them all. In the recording, he says, yeah, because everyone out there thinks we're a cult. We're not. They were always trying to stress that we're not a cult. In school, they showed us Jim Jones and David Koresh. They showed us those and they're like, see, that's a cult. If no one gets murdered, it's not a cult.

• 1:05:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. How'd you exit?

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Eventually, my sister moved down to the valley, down to Phoenix. She tried to stay in it, but basically if you're away, they're not really letting you do it. Everybody tived money. Everyone was paying for Trina and Steven's life.

• 1:06:07Dax Shepard?

  For her weekly show.

• 1:06:08Speaker 06

  Exactly. My sister went up there to tithe and I guess she was trying to quit smoking. One of the cult leader's daughters said, oh, Tosh is trying to quit smoking. And Trina went, smoking doesn't cause cancer. And Tosh was like, okay, that's it. Like, that was her last straw.

• 1:06:24Dax Shepard?

  Well, fourteenth century doctors don't really know yet about small cell carcinoma. The irony too of the spirit being invoked somehow would have some elevated something because they were a fourteenth century doctor. Like, nobody on earth right now would be as bad of a doctor as a fourteenth century doctor.

• 1:06:43Speaker 06

  Right? And he would give medical advice.

• 1:06:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, God.

• 1:06:47Speaker 06

  What blood pressure medication are you on? I don't like it.

• 1:06:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:06:50Speaker 06

  Oh, my God.

• 1:06:51Dax Shepard?

  Even though he only dealt in blood bleeding and probably leeches.

• 1:06:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, like my friend's mom died of a stroke. If we were getting actual medical care, we would have known that she had high blood pressure. But instead, we were listening to the spirit. So that kind of stuff makes me really angry.

• 1:07:08Dax Shepard?

  Did you end up having a relationship with your dad?

• 1:07:11Speaker 06

  Turns out he had manic bipolar, which he also would have known if therapy was a thing or if medical psychology was a thing. So I ended up having a relationship with him and then it kind of fell out because I didn't go live with him. I live with my sister. And then he had a huge episode, kept having episodes. He would get off his meds, on his meds, and then he started doing drugs. And so now his brain is pretty fraught. Yeah. Oh, man. We still have a relationship with him. We love him. He comes over for dinner and everything, but he's just not the same guy.

• 1:07:46Dax Shepard?

  Francesca, you have been dealt quite a fucking hand. My Lord, the fact that you're in that cute sweater and put together.

• 1:07:53Speaker 06

  I made this sweater. Oh, my gosh. So cute. One of the guys from the cult is a chess master because there was like this whole thing. Steven was obsessed with chess. He was a co-founder of chess.com, which is where you play online chess. And he just wrote a book and it's coming out in September and it's gonna be about the cult a little bit and also his chess journey.

• 1:08:16Dax Shepard?

  Did he ultimately leave the cult? Will it be a critical look at the cult?

• 1:08:20Speaker 06

  Yes, everyone has left the cult. There are still people that still have it in their brain. They're so brainwashed that it's still real for him, including my dad. He'll go in and out because he was so abused by them. But yeah, the cult is dismantled.

• 1:08:35Dax Shepard?

  I want to see Trina's show. I wish she would just do it at a black box theater so I could see it as like a one woman show.

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  She used to do public chances. She passed, actually. She died three years ago. It was like an alcohol. Induced dementia, which makes sense. I still don't know if she was in on it.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:55Speaker 06

  It's so hard.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  It's hard to know that.

• 1:08:57Speaker 06

  Or was it Steven, like, saw this craziness about her and decided to capitalize on it? I wish I could be a fly on the wall to hear a conversation that went on.

• 1:09:08Dax Shepard?

  If we're to, like, just look at the pattern of history and acknowledge it is real, and my hunch is Steven was somehow pulling the strings of this whole thing.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Definitely, but I think probably at some point, whether she started off believing it, I'm sure at some point she did believe she was channeling this person.

• 1:09:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  I don't think you can keep that up for that long if it's a full ruse.

• 1:09:30Dax Shepard?

  This is a terrible false equivalency, but we've talked about it on here with other improv people. A lot of comedians have certain characters. I have a couple of them that when I start talking like them, they have a whole language that I don't necessarily have.

• 1:09:43Speaker 06

  A robot.

• 1:09:44Dax Shepard?

  It's true. The second I'm talking as Frito, all of these thoughts are just very quickly there. They're not my normal thoughts. I've not even tried to embrace that in a way that would be my identity. But I understand the notion of feeling like you're creating things that aren't really yours. Does that make sense?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Dax Shepard?

  For her to buy into it. I don't think it'd be that hard to buy into it.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, not to get so Buddhist, but we are all sort of buying into our identities all the time. It's not that much of a stretch to believe something about yourself and then just be it.

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think your brain does crazy stuff, especially if you have some dementia going on later on.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25Dax Shepard?

  Oof. Ooh. I'm impressed you've made it out.

• 1:10:28Speaker 06

  And I'm doing okay. Me and all my siblings are doing pretty well.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:10:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Happy to hear that.

• 1:10:33Speaker 06

  My sister, I just want to shout her out. Her name is Tosh. She raised me pretty much.

• 1:10:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good on you, Tosh.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Big shout out.

• 1:10:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, Francesca, thank you for sharing all that with us. That was heavy, and I'm sorry for all that.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  I'm sure it will help a lot of people. You never know who's listening who might be, like, in a bad situation and needs to be heard and seen.

• 1:10:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, just know that they're creating chaos to keep you there.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Well, thank you so much for chatting with us.

• 1:11:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was so nice to meet you guys. I can't believe this. This is crazy.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  Really nice to meet you.

• 1:11:09Dax Shepard?

  All right, take care.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:11:11Dax Shepard?

  What you would hope people would hear is there's such a pattern to all this.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:11:17Dax Shepard?

  They all do almost the same thing.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  The arranged marriage piece is interesting that that's come up multiple times. The beating you down.

• 1:11:27Dax Shepard?

  The group criticism. Yeah. If any of these things are happening in your book club, you know, maybe the book club is a.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Maybe take a second glance. My teeth look really white.

• 1:11:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You have exceptionally white and nice teeth.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  White teeth. Just join this.

• 1:11:42Dax Shepard?

  Join now for nineteen ninety ninety nine.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  And I'll also throw in a free sermon.

• 1:11:49Dax Shepard?

  I want to see you channel and talk in tongues. I want you to lose your marbles a little bit for an hour every Sunday. I would go to your show.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Then you'd be laughing at me and then I'd cry.

• 1:11:59Dax Shepard?

  No, you wouldn't. You'd be a warlock from the fourteenth century.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  I understand how it happens. You're there and it's what you know, but it's so amazing what the brain does that it can't just pull out for a minute. But they do a good job of saying it's not a cult.

• 1:12:14Dax Shepard?

  I was exposed to some weird stuff. I went to church on Sundays, two different religions, whatever. That's standard. But my father was also quite woo woo, right? Like through AA, he found ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. And then the Course of Miracles. And then all of it's fine, but I was in a basement with him where a guy's like making someone hold something, then pushing on your liver and then pushing the arm down. A lot of the people that are in AA are there and they're kind of intrigued by it. There's crystals. I don't want to sound like a pat on the back to myself or casting any shame on anybody. But I'm just not very susceptible. I was like, what the fuck?

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Okay, but the reason you weren't is because you had an environment that also was opposite that.

• 1:12:57Dax Shepard?

  Yes, in fact applauded critical skepticism.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if everyone you know is doing one thing, there's no way.

• 1:13:04Dax Shepard?

  I'm not suggesting that I too couldn't be this way. I just am remembering that I was in lots of different situations where I was like, this is horseshit.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  And this is why they don't want to let other people in.

• 1:13:16Dax Shepard?

  They shouldn't invite me in because I'll probably be like, hold on. How do you know about that? That was invented in the 16th century. I'd like bust the 14th century doctor. Then everyone stand up and go, oh, my God, the spell's been broken. Thank you, Dax Shepard. You are our new leader.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's what you always wanted.

• 1:13:30Dax Shepard?

  I am the leader of the truth. I have a proprietary understanding.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  You sound just like all of them.

• 1:13:37Dax Shepard?

  Get off your clothes and let's talk about your spirit.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:13:43Dax Shepard?

  Do you want to sing a tune or something? We have a theme song. Oh, okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, a rindish. On the fly, a rindish. Enjoy.

• 1:14:10Dax Shepard?

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