MFM Presents…Trust Me

My Favorite Murder presents the premiere episode of Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation, a podcast about cults, extreme belief and the people who’ve lived through it—now part of the Exactly Right network. Hosted by cult survivors Lola Blanc and Meagan Elizabeth, Trust Me features first-person stories and expert insight into how high-control groups operate, why people get pulled in and what it takes to break free. In this first episode, artist and writer Akina Cox shares what it was like growing up in the Unification Church—also known as the Moonies. From her parents’ mass wedding and unpaid labor to life on the border of North and South Korea, Akina reflects on the moment she began questioning everything she was raised to believe. Listen on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow @trustmepodcast on Instagram and @trustmecultpodcast on TikTok. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is Exactly Right.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  In New Orleans, truckers kept getting sideswiped the exact same way. When a man is found murdered under questionable circumstances related to these accidents, the rubber hits the road. And what the feds uncover is a complex scheme of staged wrecks, financial fraud, and a pair of conspiring lovers behind it. This is a story about fake accidents that led to real consequences. Listen to Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

• 0:42Speaker 02

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• 1:13Georgia Hardstark?

  You know a favorite M-word? Magnesium.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray.

• 1:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals, it's designed to relax and prepare you for a night of rest.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  If you need a reset after your day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine.

• 1:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Generously spritz each foot before bed, and you'll be all set. I've actually started doing this, and I'm obsessed with magnesium. It does everything.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Something like this is just like, it's simple, it's easy, and it actually works.

• 1:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally. For wellness you can feel, find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle. Goodbye. Hello. Big news, everybody. Exactly Right's newest podcast, Trust Me, is finally here.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Trust Me is a show about cults, extreme belief, manipulation, and the people who've lived through it.

• 1:56Georgia Hardstark?

  And it's hosted by two cult survivors, Lola Blanc and Megan Elizabeth.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Every week, they talk to survivors, experts, and sometimes even people still inside these groups to figure out how belief can turn into control and what it takes to break free.

• 2:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Today, you're gonna Hear the story of artist and writer Akina Cox, who grew up in the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  It is a fascinating, powerful story, and it's the perfect example of why Trust Me is such an important show and why we're so excited to have them on the network.

• 2:23Georgia Hardstark?

  So settle in and get ready to hear the first episode of Trust Me here on Exactly Right.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Now, this is a two-parter, so when you are done with this episode you're about to hear, head over to Trust Me's feed to hear part two, and then you can binge their back catalog of over 200 episodes.

• 2:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Listen to Trust Me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure to leave a rating or review. It really helps.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  And now, please enjoy Exactly Right's newest podcast, Trust Me.

• 2:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  Trust me. Do you trust me? Would I ever lead you astray? Trust. This is the truth, the only truth. If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief, and manipulation from two future brides who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  And I am Megan Elizabeth.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  Today, our guest is Akina Cox, artist and writer who grew up in the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies. In part one today, we'll talk to her about the background on the church and leader Reverend Moon, how her parents both joined by getting rides from members in the 70s and getting a subsequent invitation to dinner, and what it was like being a member of this group growing up.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  She'll tell us about the mass wedding ceremony that she participated in, how her family moved to the border of North and South Korea, the lavish lifestyle the Reverend Moon was living while its members were often working long hours without pay, and how she began to question the church when she went to college.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  And next week, in part two, we will talk more about our current political landscape and the salon article she wrote about the parallels she sees between her upbringing in a cult and the Trump administration's ICE crackdowns. Before we get to our guest, we do have a big announcement.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  What is it? Lola.

• 4:09Speaker 05

  Well, Meghan, I think you already know this. But for our listeners, we have transitioned to a new home and we are now at Exactly Right Media.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  So exciting.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  This has been our dream network for so long. We are so excited to make this move and so happy to be back with y'all, listening to us.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Lola, do you know how we got on Exactly Right Media?

• 4:30Speaker 05

  Tell me, Meghan.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  I put Exactly Right on my vision board, so here we are.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  And I think that's magical thinking.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  And I think you're wrong. And that's what we do a lot on this podcast. We think each other are wrong.

• 4:42Speaker 05

  Indeed. Which is maybe a good transition to explain to y'all who we are. I am Lola Blanc, resident skeptic, and I am somebody who believed in a cult leader myself as a child. I was originally a mainstream, regular Mormon, and then a man swooped in and manipulated my mother. And then I believed that he was a prophet of God. And it was a scam. It was a very harrowing experience for my mother. He did prey upon her LDS beliefs, and he has continued to do that with other people until we got out of it. And ever since that experience, which you can listen to the full story of on episode one of this podcast, my mom was our very first guest.

• 5:27Speaker 05

  But ever since then, I have been extremely interested in how people's beliefs get preyed upon by manipulators and how we are all influenced to believe crazy things and how it happens to people who are incredibly intelligent and wise and thoughtful and curious, because so many of our guests really are like that. So I decided that I wanted to create a podcast that centered the survivors and centered the human experience of it and didn't make it this scary thing, but really showed people what it's like to have that experience. And I was looking for somebody who could share that with me. And I fortunately was introduced to Meghan by a mutual friend, and I got to hear a little bit about her story, which she can tell you about.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the beginning of this podcast is really interesting. I was sitting with our mutual friend, who was very, we're very good friends with him, but we'd never met before. Like, for example, we're both going to his birthday tonight. How did we never meet each other?

• 6:23Speaker 05

  That's so weird.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Anyway, I was sitting with him, and he got a text, and he was like, oh, my God, my friend just asked if I know any therapists who grew up in a cult. And I was a therapist at the time who grew up in a cult. And I grew up in the two by twos. It's really exploding into the news right now because it's somehow been kept a secret for more than 100 years. But some people call it the truth, the way, the worker religion, Cunyites, whatever you might call it.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  I've never heard that one.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a lot to it. We actually have an interview with two ex-two by twos, Carrie and Kyle Hanks, that you can go listen to. So I'm fourth generation on both sides of my family. My parents met through it. And a very odd growing up experience because it's kind of like being Amish, but you have to live in the normal world and go to normal school, but you just have to kind of look weird. Like you have to be weird enough in the world that people are like, there's something special about you. Is it Jesus?

• 7:26Speaker 00

  So no television, long skirts, long hair, really scared of hell, lots of, lots of religious trauma. And this podcast has been such a gift because I just keep getting to deconstruct with every episode that we do.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  It's so amazing to be able to hear our guests' stories and connect with them and be able to joke about our experiences because that's very important. It can't just be, we can't just live in the darkness, although sometimes a little darkness is necessary.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, sometimes a lot of darkness, sometimes a little darkness, but I think we always come back to being very life-affirming and hopeful and kind of the opposite of what cults teach us to be.

• 8:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're all about that post-traumatic growth, baby.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Resilience, baby.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. So for the next segment that we do on this show, the cultiest thing of the week, I ask Meghan what the most cult-like thing that she experienced that week is. So Meghan, I would love to know what your cultiest thing of the week is.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  Well, my cultiest thing was actually something that I read about in one of Akina's articles, which is this woman known as the MAGA Grammy? You've heard of her, of course. Her name is Kamala Hemp Hill. And she went and rioted on January 6th and Trump pardoned her. And she said no to his pardon. She said that she was being led by something that was not her critical mind and that she wants to serve her time and not be pardoned. I mean, she did serve her time, but she's still, you know, doesn't want the pardon.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  That is so interesting and I want to have her on so badly.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  I know, me too.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah, I'd be so curious to know. I mean, and I did read a little bit about that when she first spoke out about that. I'd be so curious to know more about just like what was going on for her when that happened, how she thinks about everybody else who's gotten the part of, you know, like, there's just so much there. I want to know more about.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, one of the interesting things she said that makes it my cultiest thing of the week was that what got her out of her group think was that she started engaging with people on X that had different thoughts than her and they were like just being kind of conversational and not accusatory. And she had, you know, interesting, good faith dialogues, so.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  That's actually also how Meghan Phelps-Roper, I believe, who was a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, that's also how she began to question and eventually leave that horrible family.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, she was his daughter, so a great story. She was also just engaging with people who were having good faith conversations with her.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, not to say that always happens.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  No.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  But it is really interesting and gives me hope when it does happen.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think next week's episode, when we talk to her more, she kind of calls back to stuff like this. So throwing it out this week. What about you? What's your cultiest thing of the week?

• 10:13Speaker 05

  Well, this is another thing we will actually talk more about next week, but I feel I would be remiss in our first proper episode back if I didn't address our current political landscape.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 10:25Speaker 05

  So, okay, we all know that Trump blames immigrants for all things in the world and, you know, generally anyone on the left and trans people. He uses fear mongering language about them and now there have been these horrific ICE crackdowns in which people are getting deported en masse at higher rates than ever before. And I will say like Democrats were also engaging in too many ICE deportations. But this is now happening at a new level where people are being targeted simply for being brown and people who have the quote "wrong" perspective or think differently from what Trump wants are also being targeted. These are all extremely culty things that are happening when you are demonizing a group of people.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  Trying to eliminate anybody who is critiquing you. He has used language like wanting to deport the worst, has used all this really, yeah, like fear mongering language. And I just want to shout out some statistics here because 72% of the people that have been recently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. Using their own scale that rates the threat of each detainee, 84% of people detained by ICE were deemed to be Level 1, which is no threat. Of course, if somebody is committing a violent crime, sure, but that's not what's happening here. And I will mention this next week as well, but the idea that immigrants are somehow more

• 11:50Speaker 05

  criminal than other people is false, and it's actually the opposite because data consistently shows that undocumented immigrants commit less crimes than people who were born here. A National Institute of Justice study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rates of US-born citizens for violent crimes, and a quarter the rate of US-born citizens for property crimes. Another report found that immigrants have consistently had lower incarceration than people that were born here for the last 150 years this has been true. And meanwhile, the daily average of people being processed into the system has doubled since the beginning of this year because of an arbitrary quota coming from Trump who wants to enact the biggest mass deportations in history.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  And now, of course, with this big, stupid, fucking bill, we've expanded ICE funding to unprecedentedly high levels. And it is very, it's very alarming. I, like, I would just would encourage folks, and I know that if anyone listening is a Trump supporter, I probably, probably already lost them.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  They're not.

• 12:51Speaker 05

  I already lost them. But, but I would say, like, what I've been trying to do more of is look at some of what he writes and examine the language and the purpose of that language. He, he did this, like, crazy Memorial Day post that's just using, like, rapist criminals, evil murderers, horrible, you know, like, look at the language and what the goal of that language is. And then what is the result that's actually happening? Because what's happening right now is just that, like, people who are working in farms and paying taxes are being sent away for no reason.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  That is not the America that I want to live in.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Well, as she says in Clueless, doesn't say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty.

• 13:31Speaker 05

  That is the correct way to end that comment. To end my rant.

• 13:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I have no good conclusion. That's the truth. I have no good conclusion. It's very scary. I hope that we all can work together to combat this.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Well, I think Akina gives us a lot of good perspective on how she grew up and what we can do moving forward. So please listen to this week's episode, enjoy it, and listen to next week's as well, because she gives some really great ideas.

• 13:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, we will talk more next week about how to sort of manage our emotional state and also feel like we're contributing something. But for now,

• 14:06Speaker 00

  let's dig in.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  Let's talk to Akina about her childhood in the Unification Church.

• 14:16Karen Kilgariff?

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• 15:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray?

• 15:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt, it's designed to help you relax and get in the right state of mind for a good night's rest.

• 15:19Georgia Hardstark?

  If you need a reset after a crazy day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to get a boost of topical magnesium that can help you relax your body and mind before bedtime.

• 15:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast-drying formula.

• 15:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Just shake it up and generously spritz onto the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed.

• 15:39Karen Kilgariff?

  I was kind of blown away the first time. Time I use this spray because I do have problems sleeping. And when there's something this simple, you just sprayed on your feet and suddenly you're asleep. And the next morning you're like, wait, what happened? Did my problem just get solved? Like, it actually is that easy.

• 15:54Georgia Hardstark?

  And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?

• 15:57Karen Kilgariff?

  How dare you call my feet stinky?

• 15:59Georgia Hardstark?

  For wellness, you can feel Find Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bath aisle. Goodbye. The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

• 16:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Sonny's life is pretty great. Until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his with one exception: his mom.

• 16:18Georgia Hardstark?

  To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives. But for Sonny, he knows something is off.

• 16:24Karen Kilgariff?

  As his relationship with his mother begins to crack in unsettling ways, he's forced to question what happens when the perfect mom becomes a perfect stranger.

• 16:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Is this all in his head or is there really an imposter in his house?

• 16:35Karen Kilgariff?

  Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nevola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.

• 16:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch the Hulu original series Phony.

• 16:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Goodbye.

• 16:50Speaker 02

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• 17:26Speaker 05

  Welcome Akina Cox to Trust Me. Thanks for being here in the studio with us today. Yes, thanks for having me. OK, so we have you here with us today because you wrote an incredible article for Salon, right? Yes. About how you are seeing parallels between your childhood in a cult and our current administration and some of the behaviors with ICE. Let's just start out talking about how you grew up because we have not done an episode on the Unification Church, aka the Moody's, since Steve Hassan, which is years ago at this point. So tell us, how did your parents end up in the Unification Church?

• 18:01Speaker 07

  Okay, so I'm a second generation member of the Unification Church, or I was before I left, which means that my parents joined, which is the situation for like a lot of people my age who grew up in the church. A lot of our parents joined in the seventies or late sixties. And then we were born, a lot of us, in the eighties because Reverend Moon, who was the leader of the Unification Church, he did a lot of arranged mass weddings. Both my parents were hippies and they were born in the mid fifties. So my dad barely escaped getting drafted into Vietnam.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 18:43Speaker 07

  And he was just hitchhiking across the country. And he met someone who was chatting with him and told him about world peace and, you know, all these great things they could do together. And then he went to get some free dinner with this guy and then...

• 19:02Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 19:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, then went to that second location.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. What a like quintessential...

• 19:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 05

  What year was that, do you know?

• 19:11Speaker 07

  It was, I'm guessing, like seventy-three.

• 19:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, when people were hitchhiking, a guy picks you up hitchhiking, tells you about world peace and...

• 19:21Speaker 07

  And feeds you?

• 19:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 07

  And feeds you, that's a key. And you eat the food they give you?

• 19:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 19:29Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 05

  I mean, do you know, like, what was going on for him at that time? Was that something he was really like searching for? Was it a message of peace?

• 19:36Speaker 07

  Honestly, I feel like his story is kind of emblematic of a larger story of like a bunch of kids who grew up right after World War II. Like my grandparents, my granddads on both sides were in World War II. And, you know, they came home and didn't really want to talk about it. And there was pressure to be perfect. And then all of a sudden, they're supposed to go off and fight in this Vietnam War, which sounded crazy. And I think there was, um, they felt like they couldn't trust the dominant culture. Like, they don't want to trust this government that's sending them off to war to die.

• 20:18Speaker 07

  So then they're like more open for these other groups coming along.

• 20:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 20:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:24Speaker 05

  I mean, it makes so much sense and it makes me think about how this is such, we're in such a cult era again right now because there's such, that like resistance to the establishment is very prevalent right now, understandably, because the establishment is doing terrible things on so many levels. But yeah, I mean, we'll get into that later, but like, just hearing you say that, I'm like, yeah, that's now.

• 20:47Speaker 07

  I know. I feel like when I first left the church and I would talk about my experiences with other people, there was this attitude of like, oh my gosh, that was so like, an exotic time, you know, and you just kind of see it through the lens of a film camera, you know, like hippies in LA, wearing flowy dresses and talking about world peace and, you know, eating vegan food or whatever. And it felt like such a time that was inaccessible, but it now feels like it's come back again.

• 21:17Speaker 05

  It's making a comeback. Yeah, I do. I feel like I connect with this.

• 21:21Speaker 07

  I know.

• 21:28Georgia Hardstark?

  You know a favorite M-word?

• 21:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Magnesium.

• 21:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Like the kind that's in Dr. Teal's magnesium spray?

• 21:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Made from a proprietary blend of topical minerals powered by pure Epsom salt and natural Dead Sea salt, it's designed to help you relax and get in the right state of mind for a good night's rest.

• 21:43Georgia Hardstark?

  If you need a reset after a crazy day, make Dr. Teal's magnesium spray part of your nighttime routine. It's an effortless way to get a boost of topical magnesium that can help you relax your body and mind before bedtime.

• 21:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Dr. Teal's magnesium spray comes in a lightweight, fast drying formula.

• 21:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Just shake it up and generously spritz onto the soles of your feet and massage until absorbed.

• 22:03Karen Kilgariff?

  I was kind of blown away the first time I used this spray because I do have problems sleeping. And when there's something this simple, you just spray it on your feet and suddenly you're asleep and the next morning you're like, wait, what happened? Did my problem just get solved? Like, it actually is that easy.

• 22:18Georgia Hardstark?

  And your stinky feet now smell like lavender. Like, what more do you want?

• 22:21Karen Kilgariff?

  How dare you call my feet stinky?

• 22:23Georgia Hardstark?

  For wellness, you can feel fine Dr. Teal's magnesium spray online or in your local bathtub. Goodbye. The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+

• 22:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Sonny's life is pretty great until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his with one exception, his mom.

• 22:42Georgia Hardstark?

  To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives, but for Sonny, he knows something is off.

• 22:47Karen Kilgariff?

  As his relationship with his mother begins to crack in unsettling ways, he's forced to question what happens when the perfect mom becomes a perfect stranger.

• 22:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Is this all in his head or is there really an imposter in his house?

• 22:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nevola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.

• 23:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch the Hulu original series Phony.

• 23:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 23:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Do you ever feel like your computer is tracking you? Well, it's not. It's your browser following you. But not if you come back to Firefox. Firefox blocks the trackers automatically, doesn't follow you from site to site, and supports the ad blockers other browsers dropped. Plus, you can switch AI on or off when its intelligence is acting too artificial. And switching? Totally painless. Your bookmarks, passwords, and browsing history come right with you. Come back to Firefox. Visit Firefox.com.

• 23:44Karen Kilgariff?

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• 24:19Karen Kilgariff?

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• 24:30Georgia Hardstark?

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• 24:35Karen Kilgariff?

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• 24:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 24:52Speaker 05

  What about your mom? How did she get?

• 24:53Speaker 07

  So she joined in a similar way.

• 24:57Speaker 07

  Okay, so she, I don't think has been formally diagnosed with anything. But she sees spirits.

• 25:04Speaker 05

  She's using air quotes.

• 25:05Speaker 07

  Yes. So my theory is that she was off to college. I think she was starting to have some like, mental health issues. She came home to Berkeley, California. She didn't really want to talk about it with her family. Understandably, I'm sure she was like, not sure how to explain it. Like 70s mental health treatments were not that great.

• 25:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. Right.

• 25:32Speaker 07

  So then she was like, doing homework at the local library. Met some guys who wanted to give her a ride home. And she took it.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  A lot of rides happening here.

• 25:44Speaker 07

  And they invited her to come by their house for dinner. And then, yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Your parents are kind of the perfect couple. They love rides and dinner.

• 25:58Speaker 07

  But just, some of them are like, not great cooks. Like, I would expect better food from them.

• 26:03Speaker 05

  Lucky, I relate. I cannot cook and I do not cook. And if someone was like, I will give you food. I always say yes. So that must have been a common tactic, to look for people who needed rides?

• 26:15Speaker 07

  It was a common tactic. I heard that they often, recruiters would look for people with, wearing backpacks. Cause it meant you were like, going somewhere, or in school, or in some period of transition. And, I mean, they tried this like, all day, every day. So I'm sure they talked to like, 100 people that day.

• 26:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 26:36Speaker 07

  And my mom is the one that fell for it.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  Wow, and before-

• 26:41Speaker 00

  Or you were born presumably was when the mass wedding.

• 26:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, so they were supposed to, back in the day, work for the church for many years before you have the option of getting married. It was something like three or seven years, one of those where you're supposed to like essentially work for free. And you're like volunteering twenty-four seven, living out of a van. Either going from like city to city fundraising, selling little tchotchkes and trinkets. And saying it's, you know, for your world peace or for your youth group or whatever. Or they were living out of these church centers and just recruiting people from the nearby city.

• 27:23Speaker 07

  And so they did that for several years. And then they got married in the famous Madison Square Garden blessing. Well, we call it blessing. It's a mass wedding ceremony. I think that was nineteen eighty-two.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  I mean, it blows my mind how big this.

• 27:39Speaker 07

  It was.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Can you tell us how big?

• 27:42Speaker 07

  Their blessing was several thousand couples. I want to say three thousand or three thousand people.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  That's so crazy.

• 27:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  Can you just like, for those not familiar with the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies. They apparently say now that saying the Moonies is a derogatory term.

• 28:00Speaker 07

  I've heard they sometimes go out, or they used to go after people for saying that like it's a slur or something, but you can call it whatever you want to me.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, what was this group? Paint a picture for listeners who don't know.

• 28:17Speaker 07

  Yes. So the Unification Church was started by Reverend Moon, Reverend Sun Young Moon. And I want to say the nineteen fifty's in Korea. So after World War Two, there was the Korean War. I think it started around nineteen fifty. And he grew up in North Korea. He escaped by essentially walking down to the end of South Korea. Cause you know, it's kind of like this very long peninsula.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  So we have an exciting origin story from this.

• 28:46Speaker 07

  Yes. And I want to say there's like a million asterisks I'm laying in here because. Was a lot of what he said was obviously not true.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Right, right, right.

• 28:55Speaker 07

  Like, I heard this story that he like crossed the Han River, which is, um, or no, maybe it's the Imjin River. Anyway, he crossed this river with a man on his back that he carefully carried him down because this man wasn't able to walk. And there's like a picture of it, like in a bunch of church centers. Turns out it's not the same guy. It's like not Reverend Moon in that picture.

• 29:20Speaker 07

  It's like someone else.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Just relying on white people's racism.

• 29:24Speaker 07

  It was like, it was a very blurry, like, black and white picture from the nineteen fifty's. Yeah, so like, everything is wrong. But.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  From his perspective.

• 29:36Speaker 07

  From his perspective, he went to the South Korea. He started preaching. There were a bunch of random cults in that area because my theory is, again, when like there's crazy upheaval, then there's more room for these cults to come about. And so there were a bunch of other ones. He seems to have gotten some ideas from some cults. He starts to get popular. He's getting in trouble with the law because he says he's anti-communist. Maybe the problem was bigamy. So, anyway, but he is getting bigger and bigger. He moves to the States in nineteen seventy-one.

• 30:21Speaker 07

  And starts like going on these big speaking tours and getting lots of people to come. And kids just start dropping out of high school, joining. It kind of started a moral panic. And we have people like deprogrammers who started kidnapping people who are in the cult because they're, you know, their parents were just like, where did these guys go?

• 30:45Speaker 00

  That was one of the most interesting things about your story to me was that the deprogrammers for your parents became kind of a repeatable story of like, we escaped the deprogrammers. Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 30:56Speaker 07

  Okay, so I grew up with these stories of my mom trying to smooth things over with her family, being like, it's fine, I'm in this group. Don't worry about me. Okay, I'll meet up with you. According to her, my grandmother did hire deprogrammers to come and kidnap her. And she like acted like everything was fine. And then my mom ran away as soon as she could and made her way back to a church property. Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 05

  The thing I'm just finding so fascinating with this story and also with everything these days is North Korea, obviously very cult-like culture.

• 31:37Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  You escape that, you start a cult. Deprogrammers getting people out of the cult in that era were very much their own cultic dynamic.

• 31:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 05

  Who were, you know, like, in essence, like, very abusive a lot of the time.

• 31:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  Why can't we just respond to a cult culture by not creating a new one?

• 31:57Speaker 07

  I know.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  Why is it so hard for us?

• 31:59Speaker 00

  It's a cult within a cult within a cult within a cult.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  It's just never ending. We react, you know?

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's just so interesting, the narratives that we make about what happened. Because to your mother, this was like a heroic story. Like, I escaped the deprogrammers.

• 32:13Speaker 05

  Which probably was partly valid. Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 07

  Totally. Um, I later heard from another family member that it happened like, according to them, like, much more relaxed and, you know, they just wanted to talk to my mom. But my mom saw them and thought, I'm about to be kidnapped.

• 32:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 32:31Speaker 07

  And so they were actually like on a boat and my mom like jumped over the side, according to her, and just like swam away. When no one was looking.

• 32:41Speaker 05

  Wow. But yeah, so but that was before you?

• 32:44Speaker 07

  That was way before I was born. I think when I came along, um, well, first of all, when people got married in the church, if you're legally married to someone, then if they have like a psychotic break or if there's something wrong with them, then their spouse is in charge of them, right? So once my mom got married, my grandparents couldn't really try and kidnap her anymore. Because I think what they were doing with the deprogrammers was they were kidnapping them, bringing them to a favorable judge who would say, this person can't make decisions for themselves. And then they would have to get treatment.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  I see.

• 33:23Speaker 07

  Or, you know, they would have to at least be under their parents' like legal.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  Like a Britney Spears, but in a good way.

• 33:30Speaker 07

  Or, or something, yeah. Yes. So you can't really do that if someone is married because then it's just their partner that's becomes.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  And now the partner's also in the group. So they're, right, okay, right.

• 33:42Speaker 07

  So between that and then me being born, I think my grandparents were like, okay, we just wanna like, let's see if we can like, not be, all be friends, but you know, not trying to.

• 33:54Speaker 07

  So that we get to see our grandkids sometimes.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Right. So what were some of the beliefs of the group?

• 34:01Speaker 07

  So it's um, kind of Christian and kind of weird.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  That's just drives like almost all of them.

• 34:10Speaker 07

  So many, like, I feel like it's like very like Mormon-y adjacent where you're like, oh, we have the Bible. Then we have this other book.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:19Speaker 07

  And this other book says this other guy is the new.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, cuz he was prophety. He was like.

• 34:25Speaker 07

  Reverend Moon said he was a Messiah.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  He was Jesus back in a new form because Jesus took a time out when he got crucified.

• 34:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, so he was picking it back up from there.

• 34:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, Jesus pleaded with him to take over when he was fifteen. And he graciously accepted.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  That was so nice.

• 34:43Speaker 07

  So sweet.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 07

  Um, so he said, everyone has to be married because that is the way to erase original sin. And then you can, if you go to a blessing and you have babies, then your kids are gonna be born without original sin.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Oh. Perfect way to create more members.

• 35:05Speaker 07

  Yeah. So that was the gist of it. There was like a lot of other stuff, like there's evil spirits everywhere and we're in a battle between good and evil. And there was a sociologist who coined the term doomsday cult and it was about the unification church.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 35:22Speaker 07

  It's just, it's a very kind of a textbook cult.

• 35:27Speaker 07

  And a lot of textbooks were actually written about it in the 70s because I feel like it came into prominence like while sociology like was kind of really having a moment. So also the term love bombing was invented by the church. It was like really into like being really nice to people and getting them to join the cult.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  So these marriages were arranged, right?

• 35:50Speaker 07

  They were all arranged in the church.

• 35:52Speaker 05

  What were other forms of control that the church had over people's lives?

• 35:57Speaker 07

  I'm like, what wasn't?

• 36:01Speaker 07

  I mean, in the beginning, people all lived together in like communes, kind of. When I was like a baby, they started, people started to move out because we were all supposed to like move away and start our own like little outposts essentially. But like, we all woke up really early on every Sunday morning to recite a pledge of 5:00 in the morning, where we, you know, like reiterated, it's almost like the Pledge of Allegiance, but it was longer and it was to the church or to Reverend Moon.

• 36:36Speaker 05

  Do you remember it?

• 36:38Speaker 07

  It changed around a little bit. So like every five or 10 years, it would change the words. There was something about blood, sweat and tears. There was something about vanquishing your enemy.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 36:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  Yikes.

• 36:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was like, it was a little bit more hardcore when I was a kid. And then I feel like it tried to get a little softer when I was older, but you know.

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Wow, interesting. And like, were these instructions coming from Reverend Moon or was there local leadership?

• 37:10Speaker 07

  There was local leadership, but it was very much a top-down situation where we weren't supposed to really differ in any way. From each other.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  What were your thoughts about it? How did you like, yeah, how did you feel about it?

• 37:24Speaker 07

  Um, I feel like when I was a kid, there was just so many opportunities to do something wrong that I was really caught up in the like, you know, you weren't supposed to date, you weren't supposed to, you're supposed to not really talk about the church to most outsiders.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  This is like the group I grew up in. This is like the two by twos. Yeah, we're not supposed, we're supposed to act so different that people go, what group are you in?

• 37:50Speaker 07

  Oh, my God, same.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  Okay, so, yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 07

  Yes, and then there was this whole idea that there's like evil spirits everywhere and you have to appease them or you're, or you're like fighting them or whatever, you know, you have to do.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  That would scare you. Evil spirits, she, yeah. Are you talking about my sleep paralysis demons?

• 38:13Speaker 07

  Yeah. And I feel like there's something similar with Mormons where Mormons, they baptize dead people, but we wouldn't marry dead people.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  You'd marry dead people.

• 38:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, what, what do you mean?

• 38:27Speaker 07

  So ostensibly, you would like go and pay for them to get blessed. Like you would say, oh, my grandparents died before they could get married in the church. I will pay money and then in the spirit world, they'll be married.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  And so they'll be saved.

• 38:43Speaker 07

  So they'll be saved because they can go to heaven.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Are dead people marrying other dead people?

• 38:48Speaker 07

  So mostly, but when I.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Why are we laughing?

• 38:55Speaker 07

  Because you know what's coming. When I was like eight, I went to a mass wedding. I was in the nosebleed section because it's often happens in stadiums. And, yeah, and I saw like, you know, rows of big girls wearing pretty dresses, which was exciting.

• 39:12Speaker 07

  And then at some point, I hear the, the announcer saying like so and so is getting married to Buddha. So and so is getting married to Saint Francis, so and so, I don't know. Just like listing off all these famous dead people that are getting married to women who were on the stage.

• 39:31Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 39:32Speaker 07

  And I was so far away, I didn't see that these were like 80 year old women who were just like getting married to a dead person.

• 39:40Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 39:41Speaker 07

  I thought, I thought like, I was like, oh, is that an option for me? Am I going to like, apply to be blessed?

• 39:48Speaker 05

  Mary Alves or something.

• 39:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, and they'll be like, here's, I don't know, general patent or something, you know? Like, I was like, are they gonna, like, I don't, how do you check a box to make sure you're not given a dead person? Because I don't want that.

• 40:03Speaker 05

  That would have kept me up at night.

• 40:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was a little scary.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  Yeah. Aside from that, was it exciting? Like, what was that like, seeing those ceremonies?

• 40:12Speaker 07

  They were long.

• 40:13Speaker 05

  Boring.

• 40:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. It wasn't like going to a pop concert.

• 40:18Speaker 07

  Okay, so apparently Whitney Houston was supposed to sing at one of the blessings in Washington DC in like the late 90s. And she backed out last minute. And I was there and I would have been so excited to see her.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  Ah, I'm so sorry.

• 40:33Speaker 07

  Frickin' jerk.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 07

  I mean, RIP, I love you, Whitney.

• 40:36Speaker 05

  That happened in the story, just kidding.

• 40:38Speaker 07

  No, it's, it's so traumatic.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  I, I mean, how was he choosing who marries who?

• 40:46Speaker 07

  So for my parents, it was like everyone who was eligible and who's central figure, or like their local pastor said it was okay, they would go to a big room and there'd be like women on one side, men on the other. And you'd just go down, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Kind of just like, be like, you, and you, or maybe you, and like just take a second. And then when I came along, it was supposed to be, well, he, he still arranged people in person sometimes, but he was like kind of retired from that. You could also just send in your picture and they would like pick out a picture of a dude and send it back to you.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  How many of these marriages were successful? Do we know?

• 41:27Speaker 07

  Well, according to the church.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  All of them.

• 41:32Speaker 07

  So I did end up going to one when I was twenty one, I want to say. And of all my friends who were in one, most of them have gotten divorced.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  That makes sense.

• 41:47Speaker 07

  Yeah. And there's like a couple of us left. And then there's like a couple of people who are like still really in the church and have a bunch of kids.

• 41:57Speaker 05

  Wow. We went to one. Do you remember that?

• 42:00Speaker 07

  No. You went to a?

• 42:01Speaker 05

  You don't remember?

• 42:02Speaker 07

  No.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 42:04Speaker 07

  Wait, you went to what?

• 42:05Speaker 05

  We went to a unification church Sunday service out of curiosity because it was like when we first, first, first started the podcast and we hadn't even aired yet.

• 42:14Speaker 07

  Pasadena?

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Uh, possibly. It was in like, I thought it was in more of like an outskirts town, maybe, but it might have been.

• 42:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Um, like we were thinking maybe we would do an episode on it, but it was so boring that there just wasn't enough to talk about.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  That's a tactic, don't you think, where it's just like, because I feel like, again, the two by twos kind of do that. They make it so boring that you're like hypnotized and somehow they're not really saying anything, but you think they've said something smart.

• 42:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, that's what I talked about in the essay was I was noticing that Trump kind of also does that. It's called the shotgun argument where they just tell you a lot of random points all at the same time. And the point is not to overwhelm you with their intellect, but just to kind of stun you and so you don't have a foothold of like how to argue back.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  Hmm, right.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  That's so fascinating. Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  And it works because you just disassociate so much and it just goes straight into your brain.

• 43:13Speaker 05

  That's so interesting to me though, because I feel like the people who seem to want to stay in the cults the most are the ones who are having more heightened emotional experiences.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  But mine was like, the fear was going straight into my.

• 43:24Speaker 07

  The anxiety.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  The anxiety was, but like the thoughts going through my critical mind, I was just beamed with fear, but it didn't make sense what they were even saying because it doesn't make sense.

• 43:34Speaker 05

  Mormon church used to be three hours long when I was growing up and it was so fucking boring. But sometimes like a missionary would go up or you'd have an engaging bishop and he would like start crying and.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  I don't know why I'm saying he. I feel like I only remember it being men for some reason.

• 43:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Um, but somebody would go up and bear their testimony and it'd be really moving. And those would be the, the talks that I'd be like, I believe in this church. It wouldn't be the boring guys ever.

• 44:00Speaker 07

  Give me a testimony. When I was a kid, when it was like time for that at camp, I'd be like, yes, tell me your life story.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Were you into it? Were you like, I want to give my testimony. I love this church.

• 44:11Speaker 07

  Well, so when I was a kid, again, I feel like I was just mostly anxious all the time because there were so many ways to sin or do something wrong or, you know. And, and my parents were like, you know, had anger issues and were abusive in different ways. So I was more like, just like survival mode and like, okay, yeah, let me try and do everything perfectly to, you know, fit in here. And when I was 16, I did have a moment where I was like, oh, I think there's something to this church.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 44:45Speaker 07

  And I like got really into it for like, I feel like a year or two. Um, that was also a time where, so we're skipping ahead a bit, but, um, I had been raised on the Jersey Shore mostly. And then my parents, because my mom had a vision from God, decided to move us to Korea. Uh, this was in the year 2000 and she moved us to the border of North and South Korea. So, so close that we could like hear the North Korean, uh, speak loud system.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 45:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was very close and we were in the middle of nowhere, like absolutely in the middle of nowhere. And like you had to walk two miles through rice paddies to get to a bus station. And I think part of me was just like, almost had this moment where I was like, okay, I need to like belong here. Otherwise I'm going to lose my mind.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Right. That makes sense.

• 45:37Speaker 07

  So I got really into it and then I went to college and I heard a lecture about critical thinking, about like how to tell what kind of arguments people are using against you. Like the straw man fallacy or whatever. It was just like a one hour lecture. But I remember reading it and, or like listening to the lecture and being like, oh my gosh, this is great. I will understand more about the church through this because I'll be able to make these critical arguments in support of the church.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 46:08Speaker 07

  And then I went back to my dorm room and I tried to read church material and I was like, oh, oh shit.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  What did that feel like?

• 46:16Speaker 07

  I just, I, I took my books, my church books, and I just threw them in the back of my closet. And I was like, I'm not gonna think about this for a little bit.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  That sounds like a good, that sounds like a good plan, to be honest. Yeah, that's what I would do too. For later.

• 46:30Speaker 07

  Yeah. So then it took me a few more years and then like finally there was a moment like in my mid twenties where I was like, oh, okay, now it's time to leave.

• 46:38Speaker 05

  Wow, what a great argument for having critical thinking classes in school.

• 46:43Speaker 07

  I know.

• 46:44Speaker 05

  Um, I want to go back a little bit though, because before you moved away, you were in New Jersey. Were you on like a compound?

• 46:51Speaker 07

  No, so when I was born, um, my parents lived in the New Yorker Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, which is a building owned by the church. And like a bunch of church families lived in it at the time. And then Reverend Moon was like, you all need to leave because you need to like start your own outposts. Because if we're all together, we can't get more people to join the church. So my parents moved an hour south to the Jersey Shore. And I grew up mostly there, but then we would do church stuff on the weekends or in the summers. But then during the week, I sometimes was going to public school and just had to like pretend I was normal, which was impossible.

• 47:31Speaker 05

  Wow, yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 07

  It was impossible. It was like.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  You relate so hard.

• 47:35Speaker 07

  I know. Well, at least you have a normal name. My name is Akina. And this was the nineties on the Jersey Shore. Do you know how many Laurans I went to school with?

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Yep, yep.

• 47:47Speaker 07

  And I was like, and they were like, what's your name? Akina, why are you wearing like weird baggy stained clothes? Like, or like, just like big clothes to hide your body because you're modest.

• 48:00Speaker 05

  Oh, was that a thing?

• 48:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, girls are the devil and you know, we, yeah, blah, blah.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  As we all know. As we all know, yes.

• 48:10Speaker 05

  So would that, like if I were walking down the street in the seventies, would I be able to identify who the Moonies were?

• 48:15Speaker 07

  You probably wouldn't.

• 48:17Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 48:17Speaker 07

  But there were giveaways. There was like, a lot of times they were selling flowers on street corners of the city, or, yeah, that was the biggest thing, was they were like, selling things, like little trinkets. Um, but I feel like I can, I'm like, I can tell. Because oftentimes if someone was getting blessed, they would wear a blessing ring. And so it's like, there's like little tells if you are a church member.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Hmm, I can also tell and no one else.

• 48:48Speaker 05

  From your church.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, and other members wouldn't be able to tell. But I'm like, oh, that.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  And I'll ask and they'll usually be.

• 48:54Speaker 05

  I was convinced I had that power as well for Mormons. I did identify successfully other Mormon children in random places, like multiple times.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  I'm sure they loved that.

• 49:04Speaker 05

  No, it was like a bonding thing.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, but you were a child as well.

• 49:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  Oh, I thought this was you.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  No.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  You're a Mormon child. She's at a playground. Parents are calling the cops.

• 49:17Speaker 05

  That would be like, hey, a fellow 12-year-old who looks awkward here.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 05

  And they often had CTR rings too. That was one of our giveaways. She was the right. Every kid had a CTR ring.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Amazing. Well, I mean, in the two by twos, they say that we can tell each other because of the spirit and it's not because of the bun or the.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  Or the long dress.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Long dress and the like very specific type of long dress. It's just the spirit. So, keep that in mind.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. Uh, so you were allowed to go to college. So what was the policy on, or the thinking on outsiders versus us?

• 49:52Speaker 07

  So outsiders were being controlled by Satan.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Uh oh.

• 49:57Speaker 07

  And, and we needed to like win them over, but they needed to be approached very carefully. And they were essentially our enemy, but they didn't know that. And so it was very confusing for a kid to navigate.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 07

  I was allowed to go to college, you're right. But it was frowned upon. And a lot of my friends went and did like a two-year program, at least in between, very, again, similar to Mormons. It's like Mormons with the Asian twist.

• 50:31Speaker 07

  But they were doing a two-year program where they were going out, not so much to proselytize, although that did happen, but again, to fundraise and make a shitload of money for the church. Because they were just like cute eighteen-year-olds. They were just sending out to random street corners in random cities with like a bucket of wind chimes or flowers and being like, you know, selling them in cash for twelve hours, sixteen hours a day. So a lot of people were pushed to do that. My parents are a little bit strange in that they were very devout, but they did not want me going on that program. There were kids who were badly injured and in a couple of cases were killed on that program.

• 51:16Speaker 00

  How?

• 51:17Speaker 07

  So there were a few fatalities because they were sending out teams of these teens in vans. And they were working, sometimes for twenty-four hours. Like they would sometimes do like, it was almost like a fasting thing where they would, instead of fasting, they would be just fundraising for twenty-four hours. They were insanely sleep deprived, driving these large vans. So there were a couple, at least one or two car crashes. Then they had also sent out a teenager and she was murdered because she like knocked on the wrong door.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 51:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I had, at the time, been trying to get my parents to let me go on this mission because like all my friends were going and I, I was so tired of being like the only church kid at a school and not knowing anyone. And I'd wanted to go and then I was like, oh, they're never gonna let me go. But yeah, so to my knowledge, that program is still going on today.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 52:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  Well, that leads me to a question I have about the money, like, what was happening?

• 52:23Speaker 07

  I feel like that's a really good question. And I feel like the story is undertold, even though it's been like right under our noses the whole time. So basically, ever since the seventies, when Reverend Moon was here, he was like, starting businesses and like, putting his henchmen in charge. So there was like, nominally, um, not super related to the church, but definitely related to the church. And so he was like, plowing this money back into the church, and back into these businesses. And then with those profits, he was also donating them to politicians, to think tanks.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Really?

• 53:03Speaker 07

  He started a right-wing newspaper decades ago called The Washington Times. So, um, he's like, kind of, the story behind MAGA, in my opinion, is that like, I don't think MAGA would exist without Reverend Moon. Because he started The Washington Times, he gave a voice to these Republican, uh, conservative politicians. He gave them tons of money. They would do things like, I even noticed, you, we spoke about January 6th. I even noticed, on January 6th, Matt Gaetz got up in front of Congress and said, "Oh, it's Antifa who is in charge of January 6th. The Washington Times said so."

• 53:47Speaker 07

  And he like, had an article from them with him. And so I feel like they've done that a lot. Like, they would write an article and like, either Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity would pick it up in the nineties or the eighties. Or, and then, like, some congressman would use it as something they could point to.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  And it feels like, as evidence.

• 54:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, validity.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  It feels like family values were really at the core of the message.

• 54:13Speaker 07

  It was very much anti-communism. And then it became, like, yeah, traditional family values, and anti-gay, anti-feminist, just, this is a bunch of boring dudes screaming. Really, and just like, causing a lot of trouble. Not only in America, but they've done this to other countries as well. Where they just like, really, I feel like, are responsible for a right-wing lurch.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Like, by buying up a media?

• 54:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, by buying it up, by starting it. Like Reagan said, The Washington Times was his favorite newspaper, and he read it every day.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 54:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  The amount of Influence that you can have when you buy a frickin newspaper.

• 54:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  It's wild.

• 54:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, and for a long time, like, they were there before Fox Media. They were there before OAN. OAN started in their offices. Fox News, like, they have Washington Times contributors on there. They kind of like were the mama newspaper to like birth all these like shitty conservative.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 07

  Like, media companies.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 07

  So, they're all connected.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  Wow, that is fascinating.

• 55:25Speaker 07

  And, and more than that, he like gave money to Reagan. He was like very involved with the Bush family, Reverend Moon. He gave them tons of money. Even though Reverend Moon died in 2012, the Unification Church, like, they paid Trump to speak at one of their things just like a few years ago, like in 2022.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  At one of them.

• 55:47Speaker 07

  Bush spoke a lot.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, they were locked in.

• 55:51Speaker 07

  They were locked in with Bush.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Was he taking money for himself? Was Reverend Moon, like, living lavish?

• 55:57Speaker 07

  He, he's very much a Trump guy, like, in that he bought up a crap load of properties in the 70s. Like, a whole university in, in Connecticut, farms in, in Hawaii, a seminary in upstate New York, a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  As one does.

• 56:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, he and his family had property everywhere.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  And like, was he enriching, like, was he living a very lavish lifestyle himself?

• 56:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Golden toilet?

• 56:28Speaker 07

  I don't know about the toilet situation. I know he had, like, helicopters and, you know, his wife was always head to toe, like, designer gear.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  But the members were not living lavish.

• 56:39Speaker 07

  No, the members were working for nothing. Like, I heard from someone who did work, work at the Washington Times when it, it started, that they were ostensibly paid, quote, air quotes, they were paid for their time working, but they would be handing out their checks on a Friday and be like, hey, does anyone wanna, um, like?

• 57:03Speaker 07

  Like money is tight.

• 57:04Speaker 05

  Not get paid.

• 57:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, does anyone want to tithe? And like, so you'd have to like tithe in front of your coworkers. So you're all church members. So there are just like a lot of church members who are working for nothing. Or either volunteering their time or working for church businesses. You know, making hardly anything.

• 57:25Speaker 05

  Which is so common. And I wonder, like, was there any chatter about that disparity? And that being, was that a problem for anyone?

• 57:33Speaker 07

  I don't remember hearing about that. Cause I remember hearing like, well, Reverend Moon is like the biggest king of them all. So he should like, and he's meeting with presidents. He's meeting with kings and queens. He needs to like be at their level.

• 57:48Speaker 05

  Oh, of course.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  That would make sense to me.

• 57:50Speaker 07

  You're like, okay, where do I sign?

• 57:53Speaker 05

  Take all my money, I will live in poverty.

• 57:55Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  Wow, so interesting. Okay, so did your parents, did they remain in the church?

• 58:01Speaker 07

  They remained. But around when Reverend Moon died in 2012, like in like a couple of years leading up to that, his large family kind of exploded into factions. And my parents went with the youngest son, whose name is Hyung Jin. Or he calls himself Sean in America, Sean Moon.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  So the Reverend's youngest son, your parents decided to follow.

• 58:26Speaker 05

  But the wife also was a leader, right?

• 58:29Speaker 00

  The Reverend's wife.

• 58:30Speaker 05

  Reverend's wife, yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, he was trying to pass her and give like the power to his sons at first. And she seems to have taken over the like kind of main church branch.

• 58:44Speaker 05

  It was photos of her on the wall and they were talking about the mother when we went.

• 58:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, so people probably call her, they call her true mother. And so she is, I think, living in Las Vegas or South Korea or both. And she's taken over the main church branch. And my parents are part of a splinter cult now called Sanctuary Church, or also Rod of Iron Ministries. And they got in the news a few years ago because, like, do you guys know this? They got in the news a few years ago because they were all had a bunch of AR-15s and had this big, like, marriage rededication ceremony, but bring your assault rifle.

• 59:24Speaker 05

  Whoa, okay, this sounds familiar.

• 59:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, if you go, yeah, if you Google Sanctuary Church.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  I'm looking for pictures.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  Assault rifle.

• 59:34Speaker 05

  Oh, my god.

• 59:36Speaker 07

  It's probably a picture of my dad. You're probably looking at a picture of my dad.

• 59:39Speaker 05

  It's a bunch of old ladies.

• 59:40Speaker 07

  Okay, maybe my mom.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  This is wild.

• 59:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  Why did they choose him, do you think?

• 59:49Speaker 07

  Okay, so when my parents moved to South Korea with me when I was a teenager, my dad started an English-speaking service in Seoul. There were like a few expat church members out there, but there wasn't really a place for them. And then Sean Moon moved to Seoul and he started his own. And then they combined. And so by the time this break happened, my parents and him had been working pretty closely for, I want to say, like, almost 10 years, like, more than five. And so it was very natural for them to go with him.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  I see.

• 1:00:29Speaker 05

  Splinter groups are endlessly fascinating to me.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  Forever fascinating.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  There's so many Mormon offshoot, like, there's just, there are so many. How do you decide which prophet's the prophet?

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  The tribe just started as we're speaking.

• 1:00:41Speaker 07

  There should be a BuzzFeed article that's like, which offshoot? Which offshoot would you belong in? Which kind of sourdough bread are you?

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  Please pitch that.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  I'm curious if when the Reverend died, if there was any legend around him being immortal, or if this was shocking, or if it changed anything.

• 1:01:01Speaker 07

  So, not a ton.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01:04Speaker 07

  There was this idea that, like, he had really wanted North and South Korea to unite before he died. And there was like this big church event that happened around then that they were hopefully trying to work for, so. It's like, no, it wasn't one of those cults where they were like, he's never gonna die.

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  Okay, okay.

• 1:01:22Speaker 07

  But I think there were, I think if they weren't lying to themselves, they would have said they had hoped for something more to happen before he died. That makes sense.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. So you have this crack when you go to college?

• 1:01:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Speaker 05

  Was there something specific that led you to like revisit some of those doubts?

• 1:01:43Speaker 07

  So I tried to ignore it because even though I'd been like friendly with outsiders, I didn't have anyone I like really relied on. Anyone, like I was so used to just like faking my life around them. So it was like, oh, if I believe this, I lose my family and my community. And I did not want that. So I ignored it. I got married in the church.

• 1:02:07Speaker 05

  Was it a mass wedding?

• 1:02:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:02:10Speaker 07

  But my husband and I were supposed to have an arranged marriage, but we already knew each other and we already liked each other. And so that when our parents were like, how about this person? We were like, okay. But we were like secretly making out.

• 1:02:25Speaker 07

  And then we went through the blessing and everyone was like, you guys, like this, this is a sign that the blessing really works.

• 1:02:31Speaker 05

  Reverend's really worked a miracle.

• 1:02:34Speaker 07

  Yeah. Well, because when we came along, sometimes your parents could also bless you. So we like, so our parents, they like chose us, but yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 05

  How many couples were there?

• 1:02:46Speaker 07

  So they said 400 million because they were counting dead people.

• 1:02:50Speaker 05

  Oh, cool.

• 1:02:53Speaker 07

  I don't know how many.

• 1:02:57Speaker 07

  I was looking this up the other day because I was like, how many were there? And it was like.

• 1:03:02Speaker 05

  No, there was 400 million.

• 1:03:04Speaker 07

  Were there even 400? I don't know. And uh, so I, I think there was like a couple thousand, maybe a thousand.

• 1:03:11Speaker 05

  That's wild. That's wild. I want a photo. Do you have a photo of it?

• 1:03:17Speaker 07

  I do have some photos. They're like blurry and you can be like, there's Akina. Like in that row.

• 1:03:24Speaker 05

  What did it feel like?

• 1:03:25Speaker 07

  It felt kind of terrible. I've been thinking about it lately because now I'm 40 and you know, I got blessed when I was 21 and I thought I was an old maid. I thought I was a spinster.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  My gosh.

• 1:03:39Speaker 07

  You guys, there were girls who were getting blessed that I had babysat. We were like sixteen.

• 1:03:45Speaker 05

  Wait, what, girls were getting married at sixteen?

• 1:03:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, just a few of them.

• 1:03:49Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 1:03:50Speaker 07

  I know. It was one of those things where, like, I've been sitting with him, thinking about it a lot lately, and I'm like, that was like way more traumatic than I remember, which is like, isn't that all of our childhood?

• 1:04:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 07

  Especially the cult, the cult life, but um, you're like, oh, we were all coerced into that.

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 07

  Like, like, even though I loved the person I was getting married to, I was like getting married with all these people, a lot of them I didn't know, and he and I, I don't think we would have ever chosen to be married at that young age, even though we liked each other a lot. And then all the, all the girls the night before. I was like, we were in a dormitory, and I just remember girls running around and like crying, like, just, they were,

• 1:04:36Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 1:04:36Speaker 07

  Like, they didn't know their partner, they were like twenty or nineteen and had just gotten off of a van where they were fundraising for a year, and they were told like, this is the guy. And some of them, some of them were crying, so yeah, and then there were like sixteen year olds or, you know,

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 07

  nineteen year olds. I don't remember anyone like older than us that was like, you know, even in their mid twenties.

• 1:05:00Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:05:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was really brutal.

• 1:05:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's devastating. What if you get someone with bad breath also?

• 1:05:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's like so many jerks and like just so many, and like you're wearing like, there's so many ugly dresses too.

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

  Could you pick out your dress?

• 1:05:16Speaker 07

  I actually, what, we were able to. I've heard now you can't pick out your dress. You just have an ugly dress that your mother picks out for you.

• 1:05:24Speaker 05

  Terrible.

• 1:05:25Speaker 07

  Oh, okay. My dress was kind of cute. It was like asymmetrical ruching.

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  Oh my god, that sounds cute.

• 1:05:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 05

  Okay, okay, well then I guess it's all okay. Yeah, I feel better about it.

• 1:05:36Speaker 07

  Never mind.

• 1:05:38Speaker 05

  Wow, I mean, do you still keep in contact with people?

• 1:05:42Speaker 07

  Some, um, I still keep in contact with some of my good friends. Like the girl who was sitting like to my right when we were getting blessed.

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 07

  We still talk.

• 1:05:54Speaker 07

  So when we were growing up, they called us blessed children because we were from the blessing. And we were told that we were all brothers and sisters. And so we had to really take care of each other. And so that kind of made it almost easier to leave because I remember some of my friends telling me like, I have a secret boyfriend or I, you know, I might be gay or I don't, something. And I remember thinking like, it was drilled into me that this is my brother or sister. Like I'm, that bond is gonna remain.

• 1:06:25Speaker 07

  And even when I thought I was a true believer, if people came and told me things like, I made out with a guy. I don't know what to do. I would absolutely hold their secrets and like not tell anyone. And so I feel like, you know, I'm not friends with everyone from the church or, you know, like, I, I feel like I have a lot of good feelings towards everyone. Like I know what a terrible childhood we all had and I wish everyone the best, even if I'm not in contact with them. But I still, I feel like I still love everyone.

• 1:06:57Speaker 05

  Wow. It sounds somewhat unique in that, you know, so much of the time we hear about a culture within a cult of ratting on everyone, like it being required to rat on everyone.

• 1:07:08Speaker 07

  Definitely like, yeah, there was definitely a lot of trauma that we all had to do. I think for me, even like if we were acting kind of shitty to each other when we were teens or, you know, like some, like some girl like ratted me out for like having not dress code at camp. I was still a little bit annoyed with her.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  Still a little resentment there.

• 1:07:31Speaker 07

  But I'm like, we were all teens, like what else were we gonna do?

• 1:07:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Speaker 07

  You know, like I, I feel like I absolutely have forgiveness in my heart for any other blessed child. And I'm sure I offended or hurt other people. And I would definitely be happy to ask for forgiveness. I feel like I have a harder time forgiving a lot of the first generation who raised us in this. I'm like, I know you were damaged and that's why you joined. But honestly, like, what the hell, guys?

• 1:08:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  One of the other things that you said that really interested me was how demonized therapy was.

• 1:08:11Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  Um, and how that's just a warning that you're probably in a high-controlled group. Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 1:08:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it wasn't just therapy. It was like, kind of like, all medical professionals were

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:08:26Speaker 07

  a little bit treated suspiciously, especially therapists, because, um, I think because they were so scared of the church in turn. But I did go get regular checkups when I was a kid. Um, I think a lot of that was also like, I was going to public school and I needed to get like vaccines. I did have a heal- like, health issues that like, kind of got ignored for a while.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:08:54Speaker 07

  Um, a lot of people didn't even go to regular doctors. It was like, don't, don't even go if you have cancer. And there's actually like, it feels like a very huge crossover between that and like, the RFK.

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  I was just gonna say.

• 1:09:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, because there's like, people being like, you can pray your cancer away, or just drink this special tea, or whatever, you know? There's a lot of that, too.

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  So it wasn't necessarily specifically, don't talk about your emotions with a person because it might expose us? It was more just like the

• 1:09:27Speaker 07

  Oh, no, I think that was still there. It was just everything.

• 1:09:30Speaker 05

  I have so many more questions about this. I think this would be a good time to break and pick this back up in the next episode.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  She's so cool.

• 1:09:39Speaker 05

  I know, I know. Also, I want her to be a voice actor.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  I just want her to be my friend.

• 1:09:44Speaker 05

  Will that too?

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  I asked her when you went to the bathroom, she seemed hesitant.

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  Come out a little strong.

• 1:09:52Speaker 05

  Okay, Meghan, would you join the Unification Church?

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  Okay, so if it's the 70s, right?

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  I think I might.

• 1:10:00Speaker 05

  Go on.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  I like flowers, freedom.

• 1:10:04Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  There was a lot of, like, we're not working for the man, like, we're gonna live on a commune and be in the sun and make our own garden. I'd like that.

• 1:10:17Speaker 05

  Make our own garden?

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just feel like there's a garden there.

• 1:10:20Speaker 05

  You're just just decided there was a garden involved somewhere?

• 1:10:25Speaker 00

  I just would like it. I just think I would like it. I like, it sounds like it started with things that I would like. I wouldn't like him, probably, the Reverend.

• 1:10:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  But I can just see myself being swept away and maybe some of the excitement of selling trinkets on the street and getting hitchhikes and free meals. And I would join it. I just know I would.

• 1:10:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I could see that for you, for sure.

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  It's just, it's so, I'll never, I'll never stop being fascinated by this sort of, like, hippie-Christian cult combination. Yes.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  Endlessly fascinating.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Hippie, just like, my idea of what it meant to be a hippie growing up just seemed so, like, the antithesis of being in, like, a strict Christian church, but, like, so much of that movement turned into these, like, Christian cults.

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's why you see them having so many weird, different kinds of rules, because they were like, "Well, then we can do this, actually, and we can do this."

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, just picking and choosing from...

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  Mismatched, yeah, it's very interesting.

• 1:11:25Speaker 05

  She referenced in this interview, like, creating a BuzzFeed quiz. I think it would be a fun BuzzFeed quiz to pick which, which belief systems you want to pull from and, like, create your own cult, you know?

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  We actually have to do that. That's...

• 1:11:38Speaker 05

  Does BuzzFeed still exist?

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:11:40Speaker 05

  Okay, shout out.

• 1:11:41Speaker 00

  Anyway, thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please rate us five stars. If you don't have five stars, don't rate us at all. Share it with your friends. And as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out for red flags, and

• 1:11:54Speaker 05

  Never ever trust me.

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:11:59Speaker 05

  This has been an Exactly Right production, hosted by me, Lola Blanc.

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  And me, Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Ji-Ha Lee.

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker is Patrick Kotner.

• 1:12:13Speaker 05

  Our theme song was composed by Holly Amber Church.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Trust Me is executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  You can find us on Instagram at TrustMePodcast or on TikTok at TrustMeColtPodcast.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, or manipulation? Shoot us an email at trustme pod at gmail dot com.

• 1:12:32Speaker 05

  Listen to Trust Me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 1:13:44Speaker 02

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