Al Zone Media. Oh Man, welcome back to it could Happen here, a podcast about it meaning bad things happening here, meaning you know here obviously here at cool Zone, we have a little bit of a habit of talking about cults. Some of you who have been listening to Behind the Bastard since the beginning will remember how we kind of started that series with several long episodes about a guy
named Keith Ranieri. And today we're here to talk with a wonderful author and journalist, Sarah Berman, who has written both about the Nexium cult and about a new cult that some of you are probably familiar with if you caught the recent Netflix documentary. Prime has a documentary out too on the Twin Flames cult, and so we're going to introduce why this is such an interesting cult. White's kind of groundbreaking. But first, Sarah, welcome so much to the show. Graham, Hey, Hey.
So good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Yeah, Sarah, your book is called Don't Call It a Cult, wonderful book about the Nexium cult, and yeah, you were You are kind of the person who first I'm not sure if you're the very first person to ever report on Twin Flames, But you're certainly the person who broke the story in a meaningful and detailed way. How did you well, First off, we shuld probably start with how would you describe twin Flames to people? Right?
So, twin Flames Universe began as sort of a YouTube channel and a Facebook group that was all about finding true love. So this group promises not only that you find your true love, but also that you will find career fulfillment and enlightenment and basically everything good will happen
to you. Miracles will happen only if you spend thousands of dollars on their coursework and keep up with their sort of spiritual homework, which is a never ending treadmill, and eventually it sort of becomes, you know, an all powerful control over people's lives, where they go, who they interact with, even their life partner, even their gender identity. So yeah, lots of people calling it a matchmaking cult.
Yeah, it's a matchmaking I mean. One of the things that I think is interesting to me about the kind of like rhetoric of the of the cult leaders, and this is one that there do seem to be kind of two people heading it up, a couple is the idea that like they have the ability to see who someone's soulmate is, and like that's a that's kind of
a it both sort of. I think the appeal this has speaks to, among other things, kind of the deep loneliness that a lot of younger people feel, you know, as we're dealing with this kind of increasingly closed off, isolated nature of society, especially since COVID, as well as kind of mixing that with some of these you know, much longer standing older cult traditions in a way that felt really really interesting to me and also like something that could only exist now. Yeah, totally.
Yeah, there's so much to impact there. So in their early days in twenty fourteen, this couple Jeff and Shelia, I mean Shell is actually a Megan, but Shelia is the name she arrived at through some conscious journeying. Sure, they have these videos where they just met and they are in love and they are making eyes at each
other and this is something to attain. It was sort of started as this you know, romantic YouTuber content, and then they start selling Yes you can have this too, all you have to do is buy our you know, coursework and whatnot. And I think it does speak to, especially during the pandemic, a sort of deep dark loneliness in isolation that's happening where people are enticed by this couple who they're just regular, you know, Michigan white people.
They're making eyes at each other. Doesn't look like anything special to an outsider, but clearly, you know, thousands of people have sort of lashed onto it. Have you know, hoped that this secret knowledge that this group is giving them,
you know, will bring them happiness. And because it's sort of an all encompassing ideology where if you even question the group, well then you are definitely never going to see your life partner and will probably see hell at some point in your life, you know, it just creates this perverse incentive to just keep pouring time and effort into this group in a way that yeah, I don't
think could exist in any other timeframe, especially not through Zoom. Right, so most of these classes that they sell are happening on Zoom, just like you and I are on today, so that you know, next could never achieve. Right, this group has achieved a level of you know, connection and I don't know, just getting into people's brain stems through a laptop screen, which is incredible for our time.
Yeah, it's very I mean again, this is part of what's so modern about it is that it appears to work entirely like cults and particularly cult leaders are tend to be such social phenomena. This is nearly always a thing that involves person to person contact, and in fact, one of the things any cult expert will tell you is a hallmark of a cult is it's the focus it puts on isolating members and perspective members away from their friends and their family and keeping them under the
power of the cult leader at all times. And this is very people are not all together, they're not all living in one area, they're geographically isolated. The dynamics that this reproduces itself with our parasocial dynamics, the same dynamics podcast listeners have with like like like you know, it's
a more extreme version of that. But it's part of this thing we see with twitch streamers, we see it with like YouTubers, this kind of and it solves one of the mysteries because I've watched this dock with a couple of friends who kept being like, well, these people don't seem charismatic. They don't seem this doesn't seem like, it doesn't seem like they could be attaining this degree
of control over people. And I think part of what explains that is just like, well, someone may not seem charismatic when you're watching little clips of them in a documentary, but when they're in your ears and you know, on calls with you and stuff all day every day, your body builds up like they get through your defenses that way. Like that's how parasocial relationships kind of work.
Absolutely, Yeah, you just have the binging quality of how people consume media these days. And it's the same for you know, YouTube rabbit holes that radicalize sort of right wing white men. So it's the same process. These folks who I was speaking to, they were consuming up to ten even fifteen hours of this content per day and they were feeling like they had to keep up with that just to maintain their coaching title or what have you. So, yes, they have Jeff inside their head at all times. They
start speaking like him. You know, you can kind of tell when an still involved member emails you that it sounds just like the leaders. It is a yeah, fully saturating, indoctrinating process. And I guess. Yeah, you don't have to be particularly charismatic in person to achieve that kind of saturation when you have the YouTube algorithm. You know. Unfortunately, my YouTube algorithm is also ruined, so oh, my mess up on YouTube is looking pretty It's yikes these days.
No, I actually discuss a really effective method of for my own research in various cults, which is I just used my roommate's YouTube premium account, so I have ruined his life, but it's not a problem for me. So it's worked out really well, is what I'm saying.
I mean, I might try that solution, but I live with my partners, so you might not appreciate. We'll see how it goes, though.
I'm kind of curious how did you get on this story, Like was what was your backstory there?
Yeah, so I was in the depths still of reporting on Nexium. I don't believe the sentencing for Keith Rnieri had happened yet at that point, so this was late twenty nineteen early twenty twenty. One of the mothers was the first to reach out to me, and she had two daughters who are featured in the Netflix series in the Group, and she had told me that she was cut off from all contact. That the only contact she did have with one of her daughters was when she
sent thousands of dollars. And so that to me right away, like you said, you know, isolating people from their family members who might you know, raise questions or you know, want to know more about what's happening, asking for money so blatantly, you know, and denying contact based on an amount of money sent. That all sounded pretty bad to me, and so I started looking into it. That mom pointed me towards Elle, who is also featured in the Netflix series.
She's also Katie in the Vanity Fair piece that later came out after our reporting, and it just sort of snowballed from there. I'll put me in touch with I would say, half a dozen ex members at that point, some different mothers started contacting me because they all were sort of in a group chat trying to figure out how they could rea established content contact with their mostly daughters. That was my origin story. We put out a piece
fairly quickly. I tried to get it out within a month or two of that first contact.
Yeah, well that makes a lot of sense, and I want to continue talking about this. We'll get into a lot more, but first it's time for an ad break. So here we go, ah, and we're back. Miyah. Did you have anything you wanted to move into next? Yeah.
So there are some parts of this that are very familiar in the sense of the combination of Christianity and weird New Age spiritualism stuff. I think it is a pretty old combination. I mean, the Moody is very famously sort of pioneered this thing, and you know, you can go back eight hundreds and find versions of it. The thing that I think is interesting about it is the way that they've effectively been doing conversion therapy on people.
And I don't know, this is something I haven't really seen before from a cult, and I guess, I guess I think the way into this is talking about the sort of divine masculine, divine feminine stuff.
For sure.
Yeah, I agree that this seemed new and you know, sort of bizarre to me. And certainly I've already seen on Twitter some right wing takes on it that give me a lot of uncomfortable feelings because they're obviously taking the wrong opposite lesson. You know, when I guess when I watched this, I see see you can't tell someone what their gender is. You know, it doesn't work, It
falls apart, it doesn't make sense. But I think, yeah, something that's been taken away in some smaller circles is that, oh see, you can coach someone to change their gender, and that's you know, blame teachers, blame whoever for doing that. So this particular group does have a divine masculine and divine feminine teaching that used to be a little more flimsy. So in the early days they just said, if you're in a queer couple, it just means one of you
has the more wearing pants vibe. You know, it wasn't supposed to literally translate to a gender expression or a gender identity. But later on, when you know, you had this growing amount of you know, siss women who are I mean, they're interested in finding their man, and that's not happening because, you know, the group makes it very
hard to actually meet outside people. If you're on this constant treadmill of doing spiritual homework, you don't have time to meet you people, and maybe when you talk about it, it's pushing people away. So eventually, in late twenty nineteen they started actually making pairings and to get around the fact that, you know, folks said, well, that's not my
you know, orientation, I'm not attracted to women. They started actually telling people, well that you're the divine masculine and actually, you know, you, going back your whole life, probably knew this all along, and we're just revealing something to you.
And that sat the wrong way in a lot of cases, and a lot of people left around that time, but they successfully paired up I think more than a dozen people around that time, and they continued to do pairings into twenty twenty, and some folks did come along on the journey. They did in some cases pursue top surgery and hormones and have changed their names, changed their pronouns.
It's yeah, it's not. Obviously, there are moms who are just barely coming to terms with this, and you know, they're not always using the right language, and they're a little confused, you know, and that confusion was often used as a reason to cut off all contact, you know, say hey, mom, you're transphobic, you know, and push them aside.
And so I think it is new in some sense, but it's also very old in the sense that cults often create a brand new identity for people, right, Like new names when you join a cult is not a new thing. That that's something that a lot of you know, and changing hair, right.
Shaving the heads, that's like one of the O cult exactly.
Yeah, So I mean this is I guess, an updated version where I mean it's kind of smart in a way that like people might be afraid to question it, right, Like you're hiding behind something that sounds very progressive and very inclusive. And that's what a lot of cults do, is they hide in very progressive spacesh But yeah, it's
a lot. It's a lot to take in, and I definitely like to bring experts up to speed on this and get their perspectives because I don't know everything, you know, I can't possibly pretend to know what's in someone's heart and mind and body, you know, at any time. So everyone is just working through it. Like one of the experts in the documentary says, you know, some of these folks could have been transmit all along, but the way that they're being told to do it is can starting to say the least.
Yeah, And I mean I think there's some interesting stuff with how they were able to do this, which is even before they started forcely transitioning people, there was this is I think the most trans people I've ever seen in a cult like this, Like the number of people who were trans going in was really high, and I suspect that was how they were able to sort of like like you know, like one of the people in the documentary was talking about how she was like a
transforman she was being basically like tokenized by the group as this like hey, we're like trans inclusive thing. And I wonder how much of the way they were able to do this is from basically taking the firsthand experience of like actual trans people and then like using that to try to convince people of this really weird sort of essentialist like we've decided that you're the divide and masculine, so you have to transition to be a and now stuff.
The origin story of it is you're right in reaching out to LGBTQ type communities, So folks like our Celia who you see in the documentary, and also Jesse who you see in the Netflix documentary. They were sent out recruiting in queer spaces, so any type of queer Facebook group, Twitter user, you know, YouTuber. They were in the comments there talking about their twin Flame journey and talking about how queer inclusive it was. So they were actively doing
that and it's fascinating to see. You know, you can go back through Twitter history and find, you know, how they were phrasing these things. You know, like that was their job basically to do outreach for the group in queer spaces. They also did lots of PTSD spaces, former military spaces. You know, they really like tried to find any slice of a person who might need a community, who might be lonely, and sort of feed them into
the group. And you're right, I think if you have a bunch of queer, open minded people in a space, there's a lot you can do with you know, suggestion, There's a lot you can do with a deck of Tarot cards. It seems a lot of these, you know, gender conversions started with a tarot reading where they would just hold up a card that represented them or their supposed partner and you know, sort of building off of that.
So it is it's new and old in so many ways because yeah, you're just using the divine to basically just dictate any aspect of someone's life. You know what they eat, what they wear, where they go everything.
Yeah, and I mean it's also we're talking about like how how much of this kind of plays on loneliness, the fact that people are desperate for companionship, that particularly younger people are like dating less or more socially isolated, and like, if you want to push that up to the nth degree, you take a group of people who is under siege right now and so particularly having trouble like being safely out and around people right like, you give them what looks like it's a safe, welcoming community
that's supportive of them, and if especially they have not had that. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's deeply insidious and evil.
I would say, it's powerful stuff. I would say when I go on the Facebook group, you know, I'm blocked now, but when I could, it would you know, show folks really deep into a fantasy, you know, like they want a perfect life for themselves where they are openly welcomed with open arms, where the people that they care about care about them back, you know, and that's often not actually the case in their home life, but it seems to be real on this Facebook page, and they think,
you know, if I just put in the work, this will happen for me, that straight guy who I'm into is going to come around and see that we're twin flames. And so yeah, it definitely also feeds into a bit of fantasy and delusion. That's you know, I think maybe a symptom of us being so isolated in our you know, pandemic brain spaces.
Speaking of isolated shit, Well, it's an AD, it's an AD break. I don't I don't know anything it goes with that, But here's some ads. Ah and we're back. Sorry, you've just encountered some of our classic incombatant AD transitions. But what's not incompetent is your reporting on this subject.
And I'm I'm curious as you realize how potentially a lot of what's going on in this cult, with this divide masculine divide feminine stuff, could, if not handled carefully, play into some really pernicious culture war stuff that's going on in the country right now. How do you kind of, like how consciously did you sort of work to avoid that.
Yeah, that is definitely something I'm worried about, is that this could feed into some sort of culture war talking point. And you know, you're seeing the seeds of that. If you search Twitter very deeply, you can find it. I guess X, I'm calling it Twitter. It's still Twitter to me.
Yeah, it's still Twitter.
It's only acceptable dead naming.
Speaking of dead naming, yes, So I definitely wanted to be as careful as possible, listen to trans people as much as possible, you know. So that's why our Celia was one of the first folks that I talked to, and you know, she had just such an interesting understanding of this because she, you know, had transitioned before she came into this group, and she was able to witness
so much of the coaching that was happening. And I'm just so grateful for someone who goes through that ringer and still is able to articulate what happened afterwards, because you know, not everybody comes around to understanding it as
deeply as she did. So that was my main, you know thing, was I was going to listen to trans people and then yeah, I guess just trying to sort out what was the ideology of the group, how that was being you know, I guess executed, and yeah, just trying to come from this expert perspective that Yeah, yeah, nobody can tell you what your gender is, and this is actually an example of that. It was hard to wrap my head around and I still worry about it.
I'm still worrying about my words kind of right now.
Yeah, that was something in the documentary that like you could see the filmmakers kind of like you can you can see them kind of going back and forth between wanting to use people getting top surgery as this kind of like shock factor thing, but then also like at the same time being like wait, hold on, like this is you know, this is something that you can very very easily like be a right wing transphobe and just like take a clip of and put on the internet
and be like, hey, like we need to stop gender clinics from being able to do this. And I don't know. I think I think you've handled it pretty well, but I don't know, like this is this is something that is like I think like one of the important things is like this cult is ran by SIS people, and
this is you know what. I think it was a good decision for you to talk about it in terms of conversion therapy, because that's a lot closer to what's happening than people transitioning and you know, I mean like it's I don't know, like I would say. The thing that's complicated about it, right is you know you it's you can't talk. It's really really it's almost impossible to like talk to the people who are going through this and get an understanding of what their sense of their
gender is. I mean, like I've I watched a couple of the videos that they made and like, I don't know, it's it's it's really difficult to like it's it's it's easy to play arm tre psychologist with it, and I don't want to do that. And so yeah, I think I think you've been walking a difficult line. And yeah, I keep.
My hands off that too. You know, like I am not going to tell any one of those folks, you know, Gabe Ray what's going on in their brains and bodies. I just do happen to know about the systematic sort
of coaching that they were, you know, exposed to. So, you know, for in the case of Jesse Hersey, she had months and months of coaching around letting go of her entire life, her entire identity starting over, let go of any image of what you think your twin flame could be right, And so if you're doing that, you know, and eventually folks do sort of acquiesque. I think it's
similar in a gender conversion coaching situation. Some people acquiesque, you know, they get into a high pressure situation, they're being told who they are, They're being told there will be consequences if they, you know, go back to their normal queer self. So so that actually does get somebody to change, but in a beer based situation. So I can speak to the coaching, but yes, I'm never going to be a person telling anyone what their gender is
because we don't know. Hopefully, you know, they can break free of what I think is you know, pretty manipulative coercive practices and then they can tell us more about who they are.
Yeah, And I mean I think the other thing I'll say about that is like, well, I mean, we know, just on a societal level, that it's possible to force people to live as a gender that they're not and to identify themselves as that gender by systematic social pressure. And we know this because this is the story of like every transperson who's ever lived, right and totally you know, and like it sucks, like it really fucking sucks, like
having someone force a gender on you. And I really hope that these people, like I hope these people find fin and who they are and you know, whatever form that takes, that they're not being coerced into it, because like, yeah, and this is something I think that was in I think it was in the Netflix documentary that people were
talking about. This is like, you know, in terms of people who could understand what this is like, Like I think other trans people are probably some of the only people in the world who actually do, like even sort of understand what it's like to be forced to be a gender if that you're not. And so yeah, I'm hoping that this develops in a way like of solidarity and not of weaponization by right wingers.
But I mean, I think you guys have done all you could reasonably do to avoid that, like the culture war is going to do what the culture war does. I wanted to get into Keith Ranieri a little bit and kind of how what went on with the Nexium cult, because he's a friend of the pod over here a lot about the details of what he got up to. He's obviously probably the biggest recent cult in the US.
And like us popular culture at least, you know, there's a couple other little bit of other competition for that title, but not a ton. And yeah, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how some of how people's awareness of that, because like, obviously, given the media environment, all the people getting pulled in by the Twin Flames cult were aware to some extent of cult dynamics and probably of this story of this cult that is not unrelated.
Definitely. Yeah, So there is a bit of stories colliding. When you write about cults, there's only so many of them. Inevitably stories start to cross over. So I was still, yeah, covering Vnexium trial and you know, folloout sentencings when this story came across my desk, you know, and even the first person who talked to me about it, it was like, I think it's similar, you know, I think their practices
are similar. And sure enough, I go and look at this mind alignment process and you're right, it's it's kind of similar to auditing, and scientology is kind of similar to you know, what Nexium was doing.
So it's.
Yeah, the tools of manipulation are common across many of these groups, and I would say, you know, not just ex members of Twin Flames, but even potentially the leaders of Twin Flames have studied other groups, including Nexium. There is the detail in the documentary that Jeff actually made folks in the group write an essay about why Keith R. Nieri was a cult leader but why he was not one, based on watching the vow in seduced. So that's just, yeah,
a world's colliding for me. But yeah, I think Nexium has in some ways brought a certain understanding. So of the sources I was talking to, yeah, had an understanding of how that worked. And you know what made that wrong, what made that coercion. Twin Flames doesn't have as many of the aspects as nexiums. So they don't have a blackmail program, right, there's no branding in Twin Flames universe. And you know their diet plan was actually you know,
load up on calories. Right, So there's some various differences that you know, maybe Jeff studied and thought he could fly under the radar with that. I don't know. I don't know Jeff's motivations. He has only sent me long, rambling emails. He has never agreed to an interview. But yes, there's so much commonality, including the lawsuits that came out
of this. So when I reported on this in twenty twenty, immediately after our first story, twin Flames Universe sent a bunch of threatening letters to all of who they suspected was cooperating with my reporting. So this was a group of some thirty five people. I definitely didn't interview all
of them, but they were suspected collaborators. And it basically said, if you do not retract your story within twenty four hours and write a public apology, we are going to publish very damning information about you, and we might pursue a lawsuit. And this letter was not signed by a lawyer, you know.
So signed legit.
Yeah, in reporting on it, which we did, and of course nobody retracted, but sure enough, a couple months after that, they did file a defamation suit against I want to say, seven or eight members and one mom, And of course that got thrown out. But that's the next you and playbook is sue sue folks until they don't speak to anyone anymore. Right, So it's a silencing tactic and it worked. It really shook people up. I definitely wanted to give
people space after that. Yeah, it was definitely deja vus. I guess to see that many lawsuits because there were two separate ones both thrown out.
Yeah, I mean, and that's like something I've had to like coach some some younger journalists and stuff through too, because it's a favorite tactic of a lot of terrible people, like send out legal threats and like, this is not legal advice. You should always consult a lawyer. But the vast majority of threats like that that are sent out cannot be backed up to any realistic extent. Again, don't ever assume that always consult a lawyer about this sort
of thing. But like the fact that somebody sends you a we're going to sue you or like a cease and assist does not mean they can actually hurt you, right, It just means like for a lot of people, that's like a go to sort of thing.
Yeah, but it does evoke emotions.
In the Netflix, stuy, and it does mean you've got to reach out to a lawyer, which is scary, you know.
Yes, yes, thankfully we had vice lawyers that on that one, but I don't know. In the Netflix documentary, Jeff actually names me, you know, and tries to intimidate me by name. And that was actually cut from a much longer video, And I have to say, when it first came out it did make me want a cuke. Now when I see it in the series, it makes me laugh. But it Yeah, you can really intimidate someone with that stuff.
Sure, I think we should probably end on kind of talking about where things are now, because again, if you've watched the documentary, I think the thing that was brought up to me by a couple of people I know who watched it was like, so, wait, they're so just out there doing it.
You know.
Used to when stuff like this gets covered, they're being some sort of satisfying narrative arc. They've been charged, they're in you know, prison, they're on the run. But this like, they're just continuing to do cult stuff. And I think part of like one of the things that is unfortunate. It's just I'm not a law expert. Again, but just from what I'm looked at, it's not clear to me that they've broken a law in a way that's going to be easy to come after them for.
Yeah, So this is the interesting thing about Twin Flames universe is. It does sort of straddle this line between you know, it's not nexium. They weren't clear up, they.
Haven't abducted people, Yes, exactly.
They haven't risen to that level. Although there are folks who are in this group who believe they were trafficked, which is an interesting perspective because they weren't able to choose the person that they were having sexual contact with, that they didn't even get to control when or how that sexual will contact happened. It would take I think, you know, a very ambitious prosecutor to take on that
kind of case. But back in twenty twenty, some of these moms were already calling you know, the FBI and the local Farmington Hills police. Farmington Hills has been like, this is not our jurisdiction. If anything like, go to the FBI. We haven't heard any particular updates from that, you know case. Certainly, folks have said things to me that sound a bit like fraud. You know, wire fraud is a very broad concept. I don't know if that's
actually the case. I am not a lawyer, I'm not a prosecutor, but definitely I think the filmmakers behind the Netflix documentary in particular, think that this is up to the FBI. They should be taking action, and they want their documentary to spur that action. So yeah, we'll see what happens. I you know, am as I said, not an expert, not a lawyer, but certainly a lot of the things that I've heard about sound very concerning and very similar.
Yeah, I mean, and I yeah, it's tough because, like I mean, I do. I will say I would be shocked if there's not an active FBI investigation purely based on how how popular the documentaries have been. Right, Like that doesn't mean anything will actually happen, but at this point I would be shocked if they were not seriously looking into it, just because it's like they're probably getting hassled by a bunch of people.
Yes, and I mean it is a very culty thing that they also collect everything, you know, video of everything they've done.
There's a lot to look into.
Yeah.
The Yes, the hard drive that one of the folks in the documentary named Keeley collected was literally called the Holy Grail. Right nextium for Keith Ranieri, his you know, damning evidence was called Studies. So I feel like this is the studies hard drive yeah.
In that case, Well, we'll continue to all look into this and excited to kind of see hopefully eventually some sort of justice being done, although that's always a lot to ask for out of the world. Yeah, well, Mia, did you have anything else you wanted to get into.
I think that's basically everything.
Okay, And Sarah, did you have anything else you wanted to make sure to mention?
Well, I would just like to mention that, you know, having a belief about something like a soulmate is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't want people to feel stupid for having weird beliefs. If you open your third eye and you know, believe your partner has been you know, in your dreams, since, that's fine to me. I don't want to disparage that kind of person. It's the systematic
coersion that you know, I'm particularly concerned about in my reporting. Yeah, but yeah, maybe you could check out my book it's called Don't Call It a Cult. Yeah, about the Nexium case. You can follow me on Twitter Sarah Burns b E r MS not X I'm dead naming Twitter again. Yeah, Yeah, that's about it.
All right. Well, everyone, that's been Another episode of it could happen here Until next time, Why don't you go happen somewhere else?
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