Armchair Anonymous: Cults II

24:19It was so scary, but I have a bachelor's degree and I'm a ER nurse. 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. Any foreign objects? What's the term? Rectal. Rectal foreign objects. There's a cucumber, Gatorade bottle. Oh, Gatorade. Oh my God. A kid with a lipstick. Oh no. Did you watch The Pit? Yes, I watched The Pit. Hands down the most accurate medical show I've ever seen. There we go. The one thing they never get right is nurses are so underrepresented. We're doing everything.

25:02The docs put in orders. We do it. Wow. Really quick. Did dad find his way to another fringy religion? He is a pastor and he has a small church. And what about your siblings? Did they transition well into the worldly world? 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. Does it diminish your confidence in your ability to evaluate reality?

25:37To some degree, there's things I have expectations of people, how they're going to treat me, how they're going to 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. To me, there is nothing more impressive than shedding an old life and starting fresh. Thank you. Yeah, do you like Megan Phelps Roper? Have you heard her talk at all? I don't think so. She was in Westboro Baptist, that wild Baptist church that holds the terrible signs up at funerals.

26:14She did leave her family. I'm just in awe of people who can do that. Me too. It's very hard. Well, can my husband come say hi? Yeah, of course. Hi, handsome husband. oh there's a cat in the mix my daughter talked me into one and then now we have four oh kind of got duped on that deal 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 yeah they work 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 and sing the kids to bed.

26:57Yeah, 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. 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. You are well-versed. That's helpful. Well, it's so nice meeting both of you guys. Yes, thanks for sharing. Nice to meet you. All right, take care. Hello. Is this Anna? It is. Hi, Anna. Nice to meet you. I love your floral wallpaper.

27:37Thank you. I'm in a B &B. In what state are you visiting? I am in Toulouse, France. I live in Portland, Oregon, but I'm visiting my friend who's getting married, who lives in Toulouse. She is the one who recommended this prompt to me. We were in a cult together. Oh, together. That's how you met. Well, we were children, but it feels very full circle to me. I just arrived today to see her. Oh, how lovely. This may or may not shock you, but of the three people we've spoken with, two are from Portland. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I feel like cults are kind of a West Coast deal. I do too. Yeah, Northern Cal we had, and then now two Portlands.

28:13Wasn't the Rajneeshies, that was Oregon too. That was Eastern Oregon, yeah. The OG. Okay. The OG. The original guru. No, Oregon. Oh, okay. That too. Okay, Anna, please tell us your experience. To be fair to Portland, Oregon, I was in California. We'll take it. 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 Giftakis Assembly. No. Not Assembly of God. If you're thinking Assembly of God, that's a different group. No, I've never heard this, but I like the name. It already is ominous. Yes. So the assembly doesn't exist anymore, but it was a Christian cult, basically.

28:52A Protestant church that started in the 70s, where the leader just wanted to go back to basics, be really minimal. People didn't wear makeup. They 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 acapella, and it was just like, forget all of that worldly stuff. It had a heyday in the 70s. It started in Southern California, but it was all over. There were branches in Canada, Mexico, England, a lot of places in South America. And did it have a founding charismatic leader? Georgia and Betty Giptakis are guiding light.

29:22They were divinely inspired as far as we were concerned. When you talk about cults, at first you think it's going to 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. Okay. Okay. 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. Okay. And I want to be clear, this wasn't preached from the pulpit, like the Zapper will heal you.

29:54But 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. Well, like a Franklin planner. It's almost like an MLM. That's funny because we actually did a lot of MLMs together and just sort of marketed to each other, basically.

30:29so 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 right yeah 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 got to put it in there.

31:04So these are our fears, abortion, bikinis, evolution, government, homosexuality. 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? 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? No. There's a verse that's about foolish people who would strain a gnat and swallow a camel, meaning focusing on the real detail and then swallowing something enormous without even considering it.

31:43Maybe that reference is not the right audience. No, it makes sense. It got so granular that the bigger picture was crazy. The thing that made it a high control group was that we believe that our leader and people closely associated with him were receiving divine inspiration. If someone suggested something to you, you just sort of did it. It wasn't a suggestion. It was, this is my way of being closer to God. Right. 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.

32:18Yes. My family left when I was probably like 13. I wish I had like the adults or I, 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. 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. 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.

32:48We 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. so that way we're focused on the message but yeah let's see our fears government homosexuality eastern mysticism we're like no can do feminism no public schools and their agendas mainstream music makeup we were so scared of satan worshipers we never met any we were talking about them all the time secular holidays we didn't participate in 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?

33:28The person who claimed to have invented it was like a quack doctor who wasn't part of our church. Her name is Holda 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. So simple. It's crazy how these doctors thought of this. Well, they just want to keep you sick.

33:59Oh, sure. If you commit to 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 were just always sick. And no doctors could tell them what was wrong with them. They were fatigued. It was headaches. Sometimes it was stomachache. They wouldn't have any energy. They just weren't well. George and Betty would give them a special diet that 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?

34:28Because 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. Oh, God. This is like producing Munchausen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 have calmed down with Fullerton disease. So enter this amazing device that's going to solve what the doctors and diet can't.

34:57Suddenly we're all zapping around the late 90s. Imagine a black plastic box, maybe around the sides 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 onto the handles and just turn on the thing and get an electric shock. It'll work up to 20 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 shot. Oh, Jesus. Okay, you could juice it up a little bit.

35:25Exactly. I'm thinking of basically the lie detector device that's been rebranded within Scientology where you hold the handles and you get an e-meter. You did it? Yeah, I did it at the Celebrity Center. You went to the Celebrity Center? You don't know this story? No. I don't know the story either. What? How could we have done all this Scientology? Wait, you should be a caller. I wasn't joining. We had had an improv show at UCB. Cross the street. Sorry to commandeer this. Yeah, but this needs immediate attention. I'm fascinated. The Scientology Center had a recruitment day and it was exciting and they had a fair.

36:00And we were like, we're going to go. As a bit. As a bit, but also what are they going to say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is this like? Reconnaissance. 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. They have a TV station too. They're going to have Tom act in the movie at the very least. Famous writers have been involved. Exactly. Then they separated us all and then we had to do the thing with the hands and then they told us our levels.

36:36They asked questions. And it isn't how much you're holding, how much you're not. It's very primitive psychology for like a lie detector test. Yeah, it's a polygraph. Yeah, but even way more basic than that. Wow. Okay, so it sounds like a similar setup. The earth thing did even less than what you're describing. It didn't even produce any kind of results or anything. Well, this didn't either. They tell you a result. So you were doing the zapper 20 minutes a day? 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.

37:06In my head, I associated it with like a punishment. I remember my parents being like, go zap. Your parasite was acting up. 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 that my mom used to take the copper rods and just like put them down the back of her pants. They need to make skin contact, but it didn't matter what kind of skin it was. It could be butt skin. Anally. But. Yeah. My dad notices this.

37:38He's an engineer. He's got his own shop where he works 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 cheek shaped sort of things. Like big spoons. Yeah, exactly. Then you could just put them down. This is madness. This is how he's spending his time. 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. Obviously. The weirdest bit is now if someone else in the family is using it, you know it's like been down my mom's butt.

38:15Oh, sure, sure. You've got it on your cheeks or something. I forgot about that. They've been on mom's bottom cheeks. At 13, how do we get out of this? My mom decided she was going to leave. She's not going to leave the group. She's going to leave my dad. She's leaving everything. She got 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. Did she stay in the same town as you? So we lived in San Luis Obispo, and she went to Atascadero.

38:45I know Atascadero very well. Is it close? It's the same county, so she didn't go very well. Oh, my God. She was also probably in perimenopause and her hormones. Oh, you think this is on all fours? It's a little bit all fours book. 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. Yeah, ruined his family. Yeah, how is this celibate command working out? Is there celibacy within the marriage? Oh, not within the marriage. Sex is only okay in this really specific context. Okay, right.

39:18But there was this idea of no sex outside of marriage. You don't have crushes. You didn't really date. You weren't really supposed to have desire. You were just obeying God's command. Oh, this is wild. There's so many. There's a lot of these. There are. There's so many of these. You're not thinking when you're driving through San Luis Obispo, that's the home of Cal Poly. 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? It's the straining a gnat, swallowing a camel thing. You get so focused on engineering the zapper that you're not thinking about, why am I doing this?

39:53Yeah. Do we really think George and Fullerton has all the answers? And he never got busted having multiple lovers? Most of these founders. He definitely did have multiple liaisons. I learned a lot of allegations against him. 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? What's the point of power if not sex with hot people? For you, but for a lot of people. I mean, that's what power is about, really. It wasn't totally monetarily driven, but the tithing, you give a percentage, sometimes like 10 % of your earnings to the church.

40:25That's all going to George and Paul Rinton. 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? Yeah, her family left a little bit earlier under the guise of, oh, we have to move away. Tascadero. Tomorrow, Bay. A little further. Exactly. I'm going to see her get married on Saturday. I'm going to see a lot of old family friends from the assembly days. Wow. Oh, that'll be such an interesting reunion. Yeah. What a group to get together with. Well, Anna, nice meeting you. Thanks for telling us that story. Thank you so much. Have a great trip.

41:00Bye. Hi. Is this Francesca? This is me. I'm so nervous. Oh, don't be nervous. You have a very cute sweater on. And do you go by something shorter than Francesca? Because I can go all the way with Francesca. But do you have like a nickname? People call me Fran or my dad calls me Frankie. Oh, I love that. That's so cute. I used to hate it, but I like it now. Yeah. What age do you think you get to when you finally start liking all this cute stuff your parents did? When you feel like they might die. Oh, you got to wait that long. But once they've died. Yeah. Once or they're getting close. Then you'd love it.

41:35Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 the slight dark. Cozy. Do you do any breathing exercises or anything? I tried, but they aren't working. Okay, where are you? Are you in Portland, Oregon? No, I'm in Big Sky, Montana. Oh, okay. So you've got a cult story, Francesca. Fran, Frankie. I sure do. What if I said Frankie and she just started bawling? Yeah, it's too dangerous. But I want you to be. Okay, good. You just need to ask and then I'll officially say yes. He's everyone's dad.

42:13No, you want to see my dad? That's my dad. Oh, yeah. That's a sweet picture. So if you're wondering who joined the cult, it was these people. Oh, okay. They're so cute. They look like they're on either a Seals and Croft or a Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon album cover. I feel like they're in Italy. Oh, are they in Italy in that photo? I don't think so. So I'm guessing they're in Texas. Okay. Have you watched The Pit? I haven't seen The Pit. Okay. So those gorgeous young people, they found their way into something. What was it? They met these two people. Their names were Trina and Steven. They met them at a rebirthing seminar.

42:52I 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 80s. 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 transfer 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 18. Oh my God. You'd go see Trina channel spirits?

43:30So they collected a bunch of people. It was called the collective 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. And this was in Texas? 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.

44:10So people basically sought advice from him. How many folks were in attendance normally? A hundred at its peak. When I was growing up, it was probably more like 50. And was it held in a church or what kind of space? We had this trance room that was lacked out, no windows or anything. So 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. I just remember being a kid sitting in church and going like, I don't know. Were you having any battle? Later on when I got older.

44:47But no, they created chaos so that you just wanted to be a part of this family. So Trina and Steven 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 never had a chance. I'm surprised they weren't like, we got to get out of here. No one's even being nice to us.

45:25If you can't climb the ladder. Yeah. What's the incentive? 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. Was it Christianity linked or no? Not really. We would make fun of it a little bit. So trance, you never knew what you were going to 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.

46:02Or 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. 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. 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. People would make stuff up just to like get the attention off of them. 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.

46:44So you're like incentivized. 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. Free bad teaching. This is what we offer. We think teachers who do get paid don't get paid enough. I was so afraid of everybody. It was so scary. but also I wanted their approval so bad.

47:23But 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. Oh, that's the cruelest thing you can do to a kid. Yeah, this is nasty. 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.

48:02Do you know what it was that your mom was getting out of it? 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. Yeah, starting from scratch. How far away did your dad move? 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.

48:43It 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 Stephen's house. And I wasn't allowed to go. I met with my sister and she's like, Fran, you're not allowed. My oldest sister, I'm the youngest of five, but she was my person when my mom wasn't around. Why was she allowed to go?

49:19Because 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. How old was the dude? He was only a couple 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. Oh, boy. Yeah, my sister's the real MVP. She's the first born child of the cult. And I say it shows. So she told me I can't go. They're mad at my mom. And I was like heartbroken about that.

49:59So later on, I'm going to feed my horses. And I'm walking past Trina and Stephen'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 Stephen 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 person? Oh my God. Yeah, what a fucking coward. Oh, he was a scary, scary guy. I don't even remember, to be honest, what I did after that.

50:39It 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 going to 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 And after that, my mom took her own life. Oh, my goodness. What a horrific end. You've really been through the ringer. 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. Oh, they decided to extend some compassion in the wake of that?

51:23I 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. What age were you when that happened? I was 11. Oh, Jesus. 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.

52:07And they were really sweet. Like, everyone's a victim to this, I think, including their children. I had a boyfriend at 15. I went to trance one time and I got called a whore in trance. My spirit called me a whore. Was that boyfriend part of this? No, he wasn't. When you were around other people, were you like embarrassed to talk about it? No, it was kind of a joke like, oh, you guys live in Tonno 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.

52:44In 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. Yeah. How'd you exit? 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 tithed money. Everyone was paying for Trina and Stephen's life. For her weekly show. Exactly. My sister went up there to tithe and I guess she was trying to quit smoking.

53:24One 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. Well, 14th century doctors don't really know yet about small cell carcinoma. The irony to the spirit being invoked somehow would have some elevated something because they were a 14th century doctor. Like nobody on earth right now would be as bad of a doctor as a 14th century doctor. Right. And he would give medical advice. Oh, God. What blood pressure medication are you on? I don't like it. Oh, my God. Even though he only dealt in bloodletting and probably leeches.

54:06Yeah, 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. Did you end up having a relationship with your dad? 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.

54:45And so now his brain is pretty frapped. 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. Francesca, you have been dealt quite a fucking hand. My Lord, the fact that you're in that cute sweater and put together. 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 going to be about the cult a little bit and also his chess journey.

55:26Did he ultimately leave the cult? Will it be a critical look at the cult? 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. 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. She used to do public trances. 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.

56:05Right. It's so hard. It's hard to know that. Or was it Stephen 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. If we're to like, just look at the pattern of history and acknowledge it as real, my hunch is Stephen was somehow pulling the strings of this whole thing. 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. Yeah. I don't think you can keep that up for that long if it's a full ruse. This is a terrible false equivalency, but we've talked about it on here with other improv people.

56:44A 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. Sure, the robot. 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? Yeah. For her to buy into it. I don't think it'd be that hard to buy into it. Yeah. I mean, not to get so Buddhist, but we are all sort of buying into our identities all the time.

57:25It's not that much of a stretch to believe something about yourself and then just be it. Yeah. I think your brain does crazy stuff, especially if you have some dementia going on later on. Yeah. Oof. Oh, I'm impressed you've made it out. And I'm doing okay. Me and all my siblings are doing pretty well. Good. Oh, good. Happy to hear that. My sister, I just want to shout her out. Her name is Tosh. She raised me pretty much. Oh, good on you, Tosh. Big shout out. Well, Francesca, thank you for sharing all that with us. That was heavy. And I'm sorry for all that. I'm sure it will help a lot of people.

57:59You never know who's listening who might be like in a bad situation and needs to be heard and seen. Yeah. Just know that they're creating chaos to keep you there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us. Yeah, it was so nice to meet you guys. I can't believe this. This is crazy. Really nice to meet you. All right, take care. Bye. What you would hope people would hear is there's such a pattern to all this stuff. They all do almost the same thing. The arranged marriage piece is interesting. That's come up multiple times. The beating you down The group criticism If any of these things are happening in your book club You know, maybe the book club is a Maybe take a second, Blance My teeth look really white Yeah, you have exceptionally white and nice teeth If you want to have white teeth, just join this email Join now for$19.99 And I'll also throw in a free sermon I want to see you channel and talk in tongues I wanted you to lose your marbles a little bit for an hour every Sunday.

59:05I would go to your show. Then you'd be laughing at me and then I'd cry. No, you wouldn't. You'd be a warlock from the 14th century. 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. 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-y, right? Like through AA, he found ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. And then The Course of Miracles. And then all of it's fine.

59:40But 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. And 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 this 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? Okay, but the reason you weren't is because you had an environment that also was opposite that. Yes, that, in fact, applauded critical skepticism. Yeah, so if everyone you know is doing one thing, there's no way.

1:00:14I'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. This is why they don't want to let other people in. 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 would stand up and go, oh, my God, the spell's been broken. Thank you, Dax Shepard. You are our new leader. Exactly. And that's what you always wanted. I am the leader of the truth. I have a proprietary understanding.

1:00:45You sound just like all of them. Get off your clothes and let's talk about your spirit. Bye. Do you want to sing a tune or something? I didn't even 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 flyer, Ryan Fish. On the flyer, Ryan Fish. Enjoy.