The Megyn Kelly Show - Luigi Mangione, NXIVM Cult, and Megyn's Own Family Fraud Story - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

00:00:00.000 You have a reason to care.

00:00:02.160 You know someone.

00:00:03.420 You've lost someone.

00:00:05.080 You've lived it.

00:00:06.360 The darkest times are no match for what we can do together.

00:00:10.320 Join us for the CAMH Sunrise Challenge.

00:00:12.440 From May 25th to 29th, Canadians are waking up with the sun to raise funds for a future

00:00:16.960 where everyone can access the mental health care they need the moment they need it.

00:00:21.380 Get up with the sun.

00:00:22.640 Show up for CAMH and rise up for mental health.

00:00:25.480 Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca.

00:00:27.640 That's sunrisechallenge.ca.

00:00:30.000 Okay. Remember A is for asking the questions that matter to me. Andrea, the doctor will see you now. B is for beginning the conversation. Hey, Andrea, good to see you. So what brings you in today? C is for choosing which treatment is right for me. And Z is for ZepBound. And I'm ready to ask.

00:00:52.460 Ask a doctor about ZepBound QuickPen. Get your savings card at ZepBound.ca. Exclusions and

00:00:58.100 exceptions may apply. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday

00:01:05.500 at New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's

00:01:16.320 true crime mega episode. Today we have our psychological deep dive from various perspectives

00:01:21.940 after the shocking Luigi Mangione murder

00:01:25.180 of the healthcare CEO.

00:01:28.060 And then two episodes from our fraud week

00:01:31.080 with a focus on the NXIVM cult

00:01:33.720 from my hometown up in Albany, New York,

00:01:37.120 and my family's own fraud experience,

00:01:41.340 including the undercover tape I got

00:01:45.200 between me and my fraudster.

00:01:48.020 Unbelievable stuff.

00:01:49.080 Enjoy, and we'll see you Monday.

00:01:51.940 We are learning new and disturbing details about the accused health care CEO killer as his manifesto and other chilling writings become public.

00:02:01.200 This comes amid more bizarre displays of praise for this guy, Luigi Mangione, from those who are positioning him as some kind of Robin Hood figure.

00:02:10.300 I'm over it. I'm really over that psychosis by some faction of the American populace.

00:02:17.400 You know what? Dr. Leonard Sachs is here in just a few minutes. I mean, this is the parenting expert. He's an MD. He's a PhD. He has spent his life studying longitudinal, long-term studies of children and actually practicing with children.

00:02:35.700 And he actually knows a thing or two about psychology.

00:02:38.840 And one of his main takeaways is have dinner with your children, have family dinners in a perfect world, seven nights a week.

00:02:46.260 But as many nights as you can, even if it's short of seven, someone needed to do that in the families of the people who are now praising this guy as a Robin Hood figure. 1.00

00:02:56.200 You're an idiot, by the way. 1.00

00:02:59.340 Heard this from our pals over on the editors. 1.00

00:03:01.400 the the guy the the brian thompson who was murdered the ceo who was murdered

00:03:08.120 comes from no privilege his dad was totally self-made i think he was a farmer and and this

00:03:14.080 guy brian thompson was totally self-made pulled himself up got himself to the top of the insurance

00:03:18.240 world the killer accused is from enormous privilege tons of dough the family owned country clubs

00:03:26.940 radio stations, health facilities, went to some Tony boys school for 40 grand a year,

00:03:33.700 valedictorian, UPenn, Ivy League, all the advantages, all the breaks. And yet he's supposed

00:03:39.080 to be the Robin Hood. He's the one we're supposed to be rooting for. Screw you. Don't have the time.

00:03:45.520 My mom always used to say, I cannot respond to irrational behavior rationally. And that is how

00:03:52.380 I feel when I look at these morons trying to talk about this guy like he's some sort 0.99

00:03:57.640 of our hero, this Luigi dude. 0.99

00:04:00.880 All right, so Dr. Leonard Sachs is going to be on in one second.

00:04:04.880 But first, we want to get into some of the psychology of this guy and how on earth this

00:04:11.920 could possibly happen.

00:04:13.540 Like, how could this have gone down by a guy with that kind of pedigree who turns into

00:04:18.460 a killer, if what the police say is correct?

00:04:21.040 And for that, we bring on Candace DeLong. She's a former FBI criminal profiler. She worked on cases like the Unabomber, the Tylenol murders. We spoke to her on episode 466 about the Idaho murders. So you may be familiar with Candace's work.

00:04:38.640 When they first recruited her over at the FBI, she was a head nurse over at Northwestern University, and then she went on to work, as I said, on some of the most prominent cases in America.

00:04:49.080 She's hosted the award-winning podcast Killer Psyche with Candace DeLong.

00:04:53.800 How does a guy with that kind of a background, with all the advantages, who was a valedictorian of his high school class just 10 years ago in 16, not even 10 years ago in 16, who goes on to complete a bachelor's and a master's at the University of Pennsylvania, not exactly an easy school, wind up becoming this much of what looks like a psycho killer in just a few years?

00:05:19.980 mental disorders, mental illnesses emerge in the late teens, early to mid 20s. Now, I'm not

00:05:29.740 diagnosing him. I'm simply saying that is a fact about mental illnesses. And it's certainly a good

00:05:38.580 question. Looking at this young man's meteoric rise to success athletically, culturally, socially,

00:05:48.020 academically and then to throw it all away and appear in behavior that is a head scratcher

00:05:58.300 became a murderer i think we probably will find something what does it look like to you like

00:06:05.980 schizophrenia because you tell me if it let's like if you're having a psychotic break and i know and

00:06:12.260 we've seen this with young men in particular who are guilty of mass shootings seems to happen

00:06:17.520 between 19 years old and the mid twenties. But like, are those people generally like this guy,

00:06:24.180 Luigi, where you're fine for, for all the years prior to that, you know, there's no hint that

00:06:30.300 this is going to happen to you. Yes, that can happen. Now I'm not saying this guy is psychotic

00:06:36.520 clinical term means out of touch with reality, doesn't perceive things as they are possibly

00:06:43.260 hearing voices. We don't know that about him. But the answer to your question is, yes. I'm aware of

00:06:52.180 a number of cases, both in my life growing up, and then as a psychiatric nurse, caring for people,

00:07:01.120 young people who went away to college, and the expression is came home in a basket. And what

00:07:07.180 happened was a mental illness, serious, usually schizophrenia, or sometimes bipolar disorder

00:07:14.480 emerged where there's that bridge from puberty to adulthood.

00:07:22.780 That's dark. I mean, could that happen to anybody? Because what I'm looking at with this guy is,

00:07:30.380 well, we don't know much about his family, but there's a lot of references to like mushrooms

00:07:35.720 or drugs on his social media, and we did have on Dr. Roland Griffith, who was the guy who really

00:07:45.040 founded, not really, who did found the clinic for psilocybin and for these sort of MDNA treatments

00:07:55.140 for people who are depressed at Johns Hopkins. But one of the main things he said, Candice, was

00:08:00.520 you don't do those drugs recreationally or outside of a setting in which a prior family history

00:08:08.920 of psychosis or schizophrenia can be detected. He said, because if we see anything like that

00:08:15.040 in the questionnaire we give our potential participants, they're bounced because it can

00:08:20.220 trigger a psychotic break from which you may not return. I have seen that. As a psychiatric nurse,

00:08:27.420 I saw it. And when my son was in high school, decades ago, a friend of his did some kind of

00:08:36.620 designer drug, psychedelic drug, became a schizophrenic thought disorder, and it did not

00:08:44.880 have a happy ending. These are very serious drugs. And if somebody has a history, they may not even

00:08:51.540 and know they have a history of mental illness of some kind, it can open the floodgates.

00:08:59.160 Are you surprised to hear all these friends coming out and saying,

00:09:02.960 totally nice guy, absolutely didn't see any, and recently, you know, the college friend saying,

00:09:09.960 absolutely no hint of this. And the most they seem to be able to come up with is,

00:09:14.720 well, he had this terrible back injury, though so far no one is claiming he was denied insurance or

00:09:20.240 anything like that, but like he had some terrible back injury. Right, exactly. I'm not surprised

00:09:26.780 that his friends from college, which was a while ago, were saying, gee, we didn't see this coming,

00:09:32.320 he's totally normal. Because when many of these mental illnesses we're talking about emerge,

00:09:39.760 it happens in a matter of weeks. And I haven't seen anyone being interviewed that said they had

00:09:48.640 interacted with him in the last six months no no and would it be typical do you think i mean

00:09:55.500 are you surprised to learn he went kind of underground or went radio silent with respect

00:10:00.340 to family and friends over these past six months to the point where his mother filed a missing

00:10:04.660 persons report for him in san francisco in november believing that that's where he was

00:10:10.720 though we don't know where he was at the time the most recent report was he was in hawaii for a

00:10:14.860 period? Well, no, I'm not surprised. A couple of things came to my mind about that radio silence

00:10:23.020 with family and friends. One is that, yes, possibly a mental illness was emerging.

00:10:31.660 But moreover, now that we know what he did last week, he had decided to do it

00:10:39.800 to kill someone to kill this person and he did not want to interact with anyone

00:10:46.480 for like who could be who might talk him out of it yeah 0.92

00:10:51.120 what do you make of i mean you're as about as expert as they come in the unabomber

00:10:58.820 say he seemed to admire him quite a bit and they had some uh group like a book club that they were

00:11:07.220 performing and it was this guy and two others and this is the first book he wanted them to read

00:11:13.380 and apparently they all found it so disturbing like his manifesto that uh the book club disjoined

00:11:19.220 it it fell apart before they made it through the end of ted kaczynski's writings but

00:11:25.100 this luigi fellow really found him inspiring i almost lost my mind reading ted kaczynski's

00:11:34.180 manifesto. It's rambling. It is at times almost incoherent. So that doesn't surprise me that

00:11:45.840 his colleagues who probably were of sound mind went, what the heck is this? But it also doesn't

00:11:51.720 surprise me that this young man that we are talking about became an admirer of Kaczynski.

00:12:00.880 What did Kaczynski do? He killed people that he thought were harming society, or at least he attempted to. The truth is, when Kaczynski put a bomb down and walked away, or mailed a bomb, he had no idea who was going to be hurt or killed by it. And he didn't really care. That is different than what we are seeing here with Mangione.

00:12:25.940 he was uh being led into the courthouse yesterday um to be charged in connection with this alleged

00:12:37.200 crime and seemed to be trying to wriggle out of the physical control of the police officers to

00:12:44.200 be heard it's kind of difficult to understand what he's saying but my my read of it is and

00:12:49.320 we'll play it i'll just give it to you in advance it's completely we don't know what

00:12:53.180 it's completely out of touch

00:12:55.520 and an insult to the intelligence

00:12:57.480 of the American people.

00:12:59.380 It's lived experience.

00:13:02.300 Listen here.

00:13:10.700 Okay, so that was for his extradition hearing.

00:13:16.920 They're trying to bring him back to New York

00:13:18.220 where his lawyer is fighting it

00:13:19.380 to keep him in Pennsylvania for a few more weeks.

00:13:21.700 I mean, I think the game is delay, delay, delay when you have a criminal defendant with this much evidence against him.

00:13:26.520 What do you make of that?

00:13:29.200 When I saw that, of course, I watched it very carefully.

00:13:33.880 And one of the things that I noticed was when he was in the police vehicle, there is no indication.

00:13:41.880 I couldn't see that he was causing a stir, that he was combative, yelling, screaming, kicking, anything like that in the vehicle.

00:13:51.700 He gets out, he looks around, he spots the camera, and then he goes on his rant.

00:13:58.180 Now, there was a time I worked at a county emergency psychiatric facility,

00:14:06.360 and most patients that were brought in were in the back of a police car,

00:14:11.580 and they were screaming and yelling.

00:14:14.340 There's actually a cage wall to protect.

00:14:17.420 uh it looks like a cage to protect the police officers in front he wasn't doing that he was

00:14:24.320 cool calm and collected until he knew the cameras were rolling okay so it's performative to some

00:14:32.140 extent um i think we've got i mean his lawyer says i've seen no evidence that he's the killer okay

00:14:40.000 we've all seen overwhelming evidence if one tenth of what the news is reporting that it was all over

00:14:45.760 this guy he other than i mean he basically had a t-shirt that read i'm the killer of ceo brian

00:14:51.040 thompson he had his manifesto on him he had the gun on him he had the bullets on him he now the

00:14:58.940 latest reporting is that his fingerprints uh they do match fingerprints found at the scene of the

00:15:04.640 murder and um in the notebook that's on him this is how one of the ways in which we know other than

00:15:10.880 his book club that he had a fondness for the Unabomber because they are reporting at CNN

00:15:14.820 that his notebook included a list of to do's and tasks that he needed to complete to facilitate a

00:15:22.580 killing, as well as notes justifying those plans. And in one passage in the notebook,

00:15:28.260 he concludes that using a bomb against his intended victim could kill innocents,

00:15:34.620 but that shooting would be much more targeted, musing what could be better than, quote,

00:15:39.540 to kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference, which indeed is what happened.

00:15:46.540 Try to help us understand here, Candace, because if you read his alleged manifesto,

00:15:51.140 and the police haven't yet released it, but there is a report online.

00:15:55.940 CBS claims that they've seen it.

00:15:58.860 Ken Klippenstein claiming he's seen it and has posted it.

00:16:03.360 It goes on to say some of what we already read to our audience yesterday.

00:16:07.440 To the feds, I'll keep it short because I respect what you do for the country.

00:16:10.960 To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly I wasn't working with anyone.

00:16:15.100 This was fairly trivial.

00:16:16.480 Some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, I don't know what that means, a lot of patience.

00:16:22.360 The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and to-do lists that illuminate the gist of it.

00:16:30.300 My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info there.

00:16:34.700 I do apologize for any strife or traumas, but it had to be done. 0.92

00:16:38.820 Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. 0.93

00:16:41.940 He rips on the health care system and how large United was and how life expectancy in America is not what he hoped it would be. 0.98

00:16:50.880 And then he goes on to say something interesting.

00:16:53.860 Obviously, the problem is more complex, but I don't have the space.

00:16:56.640 And frankly, I don't pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.

00:17:02.040 he says um many people have illuminated the corruption the greed and then he writes

00:17:09.680 evidently i am the first to face this with such brutal honesty so as somebody who you know does

00:17:18.080 this kind of profiling candace what he's saying i don't really understand it that well there are a

00:17:23.700 lot of people who get it better than i do but i understand i'm the one the first one to sort of be

00:17:29.600 brave enough he's saying to do what needs to be done here to face it with brutal honesty

00:17:35.160 and he's confessing to the feds let me save you the time i did it and i did it alone what is all

00:17:41.400 that if if it proves to be real and it's so far it looks like it may be tell you he wants attention

00:17:47.420 for what he did he's certainly getting it this is the biggest story i've seen in a long time

00:17:54.320 This way eclipses the Idaho murders.

00:18:00.220 To me, what you just read seems a bit disjointed, but what he's saying is parasites, it needed to be done.

00:18:12.960 Sorry if anyone was hurt, and he takes it upon himself.

00:18:18.260 He is the avenging angel as he sees it.

00:18:21.580 Yet, in his notes, I see fragmentation, wandering thoughts, which all would support that this whole thing has to do with the mental decompensation going on.

00:18:43.960 And last question quickly. Does that mean insane as a legal matter?

00:18:48.780 Well, it's insane, of course, legally means the individual did not understand, did not know at the time they committed an act that it was wrong.

00:18:58.240 And that's hard for people to understand.

00:19:00.120 But if an individual has voices in their head telling them to to kill someone in order to save the rest of America, that is a very serious mental.

00:19:14.260 They really thought what they were doing was right.

00:19:18.460 And they belong in a mental facility, not a prison.

00:19:22.640 Like John Hinckley.

00:19:24.860 Exactly, exactly.

00:19:27.160 Well, we may see that defense offered, depending on where the facts go.

00:19:32.080 I think we will.

00:19:33.180 It was a pleasure.

00:19:34.220 Thank you.

00:19:34.720 Thank you so much for being here.

00:19:35.580 Thank you, Megan.

00:19:37.000 Happy.

00:19:37.480 So interesting, right?

00:19:39.040 It's so interesting.

00:19:39.800 I mean, this guy was methodical.

00:19:41.420 He used a lot of planning.

00:19:44.260 you know, the escape plan and so on. It was far from perfect. So all of that will be used

00:19:50.960 by the prosecution to say he knew exactly what he was doing, but legally insane is a different

00:19:57.280 standard. And, you know, John Hinckley went to a mental facility instead of a jail because he

00:20:02.920 did it for Jodie Foster. He didn't realize what he was doing was wrong. I mean, this can work

00:20:09.900 depending on what the facts are, and we'll see.

00:20:12.780 So far, his lawyer isn't saying

00:20:14.160 we're gonna cop to an insanity plea or anything like that.

00:20:16.800 He's suggesting we have the wrong guy, which is laughable.

00:20:20.280 Okay, now we're joined by Dr. Leonard Sachs.

00:20:22.740 Dr. Sachs is a psychologist.

00:20:24.280 He's a family physician, an MD,

00:20:25.900 and a New York Times bestselling author.

00:20:28.760 He, by the way, is one of the few people in the world,

00:20:31.140 I think, to have completed his education at MIT at age 19.

00:20:35.580 That's the level of brilliance we're talking about here.

00:20:37.440 We had Dr. Sachs on in January of last year for a wide-ranging discussion on parenting, the trans contagion, and more.

00:20:45.260 It's a must-listen. It was episode 474. 1.00

00:20:47.760 He recently revised and updated his incredible best-selling book, The Collapse of Parenting,

00:20:53.980 how we hurt our kids when we treat them like grown-ups.

00:20:57.540 And it is even more necessary today.

00:21:00.300 Dr. Sachs, welcome back to the show.

00:21:01.740 I want to get into all things about the update.

00:21:04.240 But can I get your thoughts to kick it off on this accused killer in connection with the murder of Brian Thompson and what you gleaned from the facts that we just outlaid with Candace?

00:21:15.880 Yes, absolutely. I think it's such an illuminating story. And I've seen this so much in my own practice as a family doctor now for more than 30 years.

00:21:26.720 so many boys want to be heroes they want to be seen as heroes they want to see themselves as

00:21:35.020 heroes in their own eyes you know i spoke some years ago at a conference on juvenile justice

00:21:41.840 statewide conference in new mexico and the topic was boys adrift the title of one of my books

00:21:47.100 and after my presentation they had a panel of four experts from across the state and one was

00:21:56.240 Judge John Romero, who's the chief of the juvenile judges in Albuquerque. And he said when he first

00:22:03.640 began doing this work as a juvenile judge in Albuquerque, he was puzzled because all these

00:22:08.780 teenage boys, you know, good men with great potential, being accused of these horrible

00:22:18.180 violent crimes. And he would take them into his chambers and say, why are you doing this?

00:22:23.000 don't you understand you're going to go to jail for for decades why are you throwing your life

00:22:28.820 away and he told us it took him a long time to to understand these boys want to be heroes and

00:22:37.660 and the school doesn't understand that and but the gang understands it the gang says here's a gun go

00:22:44.080 and go and shoot the the rival gang leader and if you succeed you're a hero if you get killed trying 0.98

00:22:49.820 you're a hero. If you get thrown in jail, you're a hero. If you chicken out, you're a wuss. 0.99

00:22:55.200 And then he looked right at us and he said, most of you, you're not from the barrio. And you're 0.98

00:23:01.000 thinking, oh, I'm doing great. My son's not going to be in the juvenile justice system. He said,

00:23:06.580 but your son is no different. The difference between your son and the boys I see, your son 0.67

00:23:11.700 is staying at home in his bedroom, playing his video games. The difference between your son

00:23:16.540 and the boys in my chambers is your son is playing with pretend guns in his video game but it's the

00:23:22.780 same it's the same dynamic playing with pretend guns being a pretend hero in his call of duty

00:23:31.500 in his grand theft auto in both cases though your son has left the real world in his fantasy world

00:23:40.160 wanting to be a hero in his own mind and i and that's the same thing that's going on here

00:23:44.860 We have failed as a society to capture these boys, to give them better models, better ways to become a hero, to be a hero in the right way.

00:23:57.520 And again, that's going back to my book, Boys Adrift, where I talk about good role models, men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who gave his life for the right cause.

00:24:06.780 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor, had a comfortable job preaching in New Jersey in 1938, and left that job, went back to Nazi Germany, put his life in jail, in jeopardy, and joined the conspiracy to take the life of Adolf Hitler and was caught and was executed in concentration camp.

00:24:29.680 That's a good man.

00:24:31.140 That's a role model.

00:24:32.100 We're failing at the job of inspiring boys to be the right kind of hero.

00:24:38.480 So how do you figure out whether it's that kind of a problem where he is sane and has not suffered a psychotic break, but just is under this delusion that he needs to be a hero somehow and he's got to do it.

00:24:52.460 He's the only one brave enough to do it versus, oh, no, it's it's basically a school shooter with a different purpose.

00:24:59.960 He's had a break. It happens often around this age. And, you know, he's lost it. He's no longer

00:25:06.500 of sane mind. Okay. I've written about school shooters, and that's a different process in

00:25:15.140 place. There's always been a small minority of boys who take pleasure in killing, take pleasure

00:25:22.420 in inflicting pain. And I wrote an article about this for a magazine called First Things. I called

00:25:27.740 it the unspeakable pleasure and that's a minority of boys that's that's rare but it happens and

00:25:33.500 again that's not insanity that's a a variation on human nature it's always been with us but again

00:25:42.100 we need to know how to capture those these boys we have the game of football uh hey there's always

00:25:48.680 been boys who enjoy inflicting playing in pain have them play the line and i was doing this talk

00:25:54.040 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And it happened that my host used to play the line for

00:25:59.640 University of Wisconsin-Madison. And I called out to him and I said, do you have any comments about

00:26:04.600 that? And he said, a good hit is better than sex. Healthy cultures know how to capture boys 0.97

00:26:12.020 and channel those instincts into healthy channels. It's not insanity. The insanity plea in that case

00:26:21.840 a cop out. Okay, there are people who truly have psychotic disorders, and they hear voices telling

00:26:28.360 them that this person is a lion who's going to eat them and they have to shoot them. That's not

00:26:34.160 what's going on here. That's not what's going on with Luigi Mangione. And that's not what's going

00:26:38.540 on with school shooters. Some inventive lawyers try to make that case. It's unpersuasive. We're 0.91

00:26:44.240 not talking here about psychotic disorders and schizophrenics. We're talking about here about boys

00:26:49.860 who have evil impulses. There's nothing new about this. This is as old as Genesis chapter 4.

00:26:56.360 Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master at Genesis chapter 4.

00:27:03.900 What would you guess, and this is a total guess because we don't know much about his family,

00:27:08.240 but you are a parent expert and an actual MD, and you've been doing this kind of work for

00:27:13.700 decades now. I'm just going to guess, Dr. Sachs, that the Mangione family probably didn't have the

00:27:19.560 dinners around the table together seven nights a week. That's just a stab in the dark.

00:27:25.300 You know, I have learned the hard way. It's very hard to speculate about what went

00:27:30.840 on under the roof at home. We do know, we all know, that he graduated from a secular high school,

00:27:37.780 a school with no religious affiliation. And the culture has changed. You know, 30 years ago,

00:27:43.560 American popular culture taught right and wrong. We know this. This is not a guess. We have scholars

00:27:48.940 who have looked at American popular culture.

00:27:51.940 The most popular TV shows, 1967, 77, 87, 97,

00:27:57.120 were shows like The Andy Griffith Show,

00:27:59.440 Family Ties, Happy Days, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

00:28:02.840 Researchers have looked at these shows,

00:28:04.320 and they found that they consistently taught

00:28:06.940 that the most important thing is to do the right thing

00:28:09.360 to tell the truth, right through 1997.

00:28:12.280 But by 2007, they found American culture

00:28:15.600 had flipped upside down.

00:28:16.700 And the most important thing in the shows that teenagers were watching in 2007 was not to do the right thing.

00:28:23.680 It was to win.

00:28:24.760 In shows like American Idol and Survivor, the most important thing is to win.

00:28:34.940 Doing the right thing, that's going to get you voted off the island.

00:28:38.160 So American popular culture beginning in the early 2000s was no longer about doing the right thing.

00:28:43.660 It's about winning and becoming famous. 0.70

00:28:46.520 So American culture is now a post-Christian culture. 0.87

00:28:49.840 It's no longer a culture in which doing the right thing is taught. 0.88

00:28:54.460 And so, you know, 30 years ago, it wasn't so important to go to a school that taught Judaism or Christianity. 0.89

00:29:02.300 Now it is.

00:29:03.180 You know, I attended public schools in Ohio K through 12.

00:29:06.040 but today I think it's more important that you enroll your kid in a school that has a firm

00:29:15.100 moral foundation and I can tell you many horror stories about public schools that don't and

00:29:21.640 independent schools that don't and what we do know about Luigi Mangione is that he went to

00:29:27.220 a secular independent school the Gilman school which has no religious affiliation

00:29:34.580 and we're now i am speculating but you go to a secular independent school

00:29:40.760 um they're not teaching the ten commandments they're not teaching do unto others as you

00:29:45.880 have them do unto you and boys are adrift if you don't have that firm foundation

00:29:52.060 what do you where do you find uh you and then you pen which is so adrift that it's president

00:30:00.680 was forced out last year for not being able to say that it's wrong to chant things like, 0.99

00:30:07.820 well, basically, death to Israel, death to the Jews.

00:30:10.100 It's, you know, she's going to have to really think it over to figure out whether that's allowed on campus. 0.82

00:30:13.740 And boys especially, boys are adrift, and they're looking for what does it mean to be a man?

00:30:19.200 And you go online, and what do you find?

00:30:20.980 You find Andrew Tate, and that's really scary.

00:30:24.440 Yes, very scary.

00:30:26.540 So this, okay, there's so much to go over.

00:30:28.880 But I asked my followers on X today, knowing that you were going to come on, whether they had anything they wanted me to ask you.

00:30:37.380 And I'll get to some of those questions throughout the course of the two hours.

00:30:40.100 But one of the questions was, and it came up over and over, and I thought this is actually a really good one.

00:30:45.000 Let me see if I can find the way they put it.

00:30:46.600 But how how do we help our children in today's day and age with A.I., with tech everywhere, with video games and iPhones, how to find purpose, how to find their purpose?

00:31:00.900 I was like, oh, my gosh, that's a big one. It's started to dump that big one on you so soon in our interview.

00:31:05.960 But, you know, to your point, how do you?

00:31:08.720 so you have to prioritize the family and i you cannot find your child's meaning of life

00:31:19.540 but you can prioritize that connection and one of the challenges for kids is that they are

00:31:28.120 looking for life meaning in all the wrong places they're they're looking at instagram and tiktok

00:31:34.320 and charlie d'amelio uh who is this hugely popular person on on tiktok and uh you know

00:31:45.580 one in three 12 year olds now says that their goal in life is to be the next charlie to be

00:31:50.640 a tiktok influencer and that's not a good goal it's not a good goal because it's not going to

00:31:56.840 happen and i have met with so many girls who are frustrated because they put all this effort into

00:32:02.600 a TikTok video and it fizzles. They don't understand the numbers. They don't understand 0.99

00:32:07.140 that there's 10 million other girls out there who are posting videos and it's not going to happen. 1.00

00:32:13.960 And if your meaning of life is on how many clicks you get on your video, you're going to be

00:32:18.560 frustrated. You're going to be disappointed. You need to find your meaning of life in who you are,

00:32:24.700 not in how many likes you get or how many views or how many followers you have. And so that begins

00:32:30.740 with the family. So you prioritize the family. You have family dinners. You fight for dinners

00:32:36.960 at home. And again, many parents are confused and they're driving their kids around to play

00:32:41.660 dates or they're driving their kids to travel team soccer or computer coding class. Cancel

00:32:46.320 the computer coding class. Prioritize family time at home. Prioritize the parent-child

00:32:51.440 relationship. And then the rest will follow once you have the strong family relationship.

00:32:59.200 That's so key that I think in today's day and age, many parents are very worried about is Junior getting asked on enough play dates or to go hang with his or her friends enough?

00:33:10.340 Is my kid the kid that's sitting at home with me and my spouse too much?

00:33:16.080 You know, are they popular?

00:33:17.060 Are they out there with friends, which is what is considered, quote, normal?

00:33:21.420 And to those parents, you say.

00:33:22.880 i i would say i would come back to the central key point that i try to make in the new edition

00:33:30.420 of my book the collapse of parenting which is that that central paradox of american parenting

00:33:34.300 right now which is that parents are spending more time and more money on their kids than parents

00:33:39.120 have ever done before but the results are worse than they have ever been american kids are more

00:33:45.460 likely to be anxious and depressed than they have ever been they are in worse shape physically than

00:33:49.960 they have ever been. They are less fit than they have ever been. They are heavier than they have

00:33:53.580 ever been. So bluntly, American parents are doing it all wrong because American parents are really

00:33:59.040 confused. They've got the priorities all mixed up. They think that it's really important for kids to

00:34:03.800 have friends who are their own age. It's not that important. It is not that important. We know this.

00:34:09.940 Whether or not your five-year-old or your 10-year-old has a lot of other friends their own

00:34:13.980 age is not important. It's not. It's not a predictor of good health. It's not a predictor

00:34:18.800 of happiness. What predicts health and happiness for your five-year-old, for your 10-year-old?

00:34:23.280 The parent-child relationship is the most important thing. It is. We know this. The data

00:34:28.860 is there. So your first priority should not be driving your kid around to play dates. Your first

00:34:35.760 priority should be building the parent-child relationship. So one of my presentations for

00:34:39.920 parents of young kids is titled, cancel the play date, make a family date instead. On that Saturday,

00:34:46.200 those precious hours on a Saturday when you actually have some time, don't drive your kid

00:34:50.180 to a play date. Do something fun with your kid. Go somewhere with your kid, just you and your kid,

00:34:56.680 not driving them to a play date, but doing something fun with your kid because the parent,

00:35:00.480 the quality of the parent-child relationship is the most important predictor of your kid's health

00:35:05.660 and happiness. So focus on that. Don't drive your kid to a play date.

00:35:10.740 What does it change when they get to be teenagers?

00:35:13.460 Okay. This is where, again, a lot of parents are confused. They expect their teenager to push them

00:35:18.960 away, and they think that's fine. And they assume that the parent-child relationship is less

00:35:25.100 important for teenagers, and it's not. It's more important. And again, parents are like, oh, you

00:35:32.220 know, well, I really believe in privacy, so I'm not going to monitor what my kid is doing online. 0.94

00:35:37.940 huge mistake huge mistake we've got girls who are sending uh selfies to boys that they don't

00:35:46.180 even know and the parent is not aware of this and it has life-changing bad consequences for girls

00:35:51.400 you've got to put parental monitoring software on your teenager's phone and say look this app

00:35:59.880 is going to see every photograph you take before you even do anything with it and if there's

00:36:04.580 anything inappropriate, it's going to pop up on my phone. And if you do anything inappropriate,

00:36:08.520 you're going to lose your device indefinitely. So one of the stories I share, 12-year-old girl

00:36:16.360 had a 14-year-old boyfriend. He asked her to send him some photos, nothing obscene,

00:36:21.180 just wanted to see her take off her school uniform, blouse, and kilt to reveal bra and panties. Of

00:36:26.160 course, she knew her parents would not allow this. So she goes into her bedroom, closes the door,

00:36:31.460 locks the door and does as he acts and and sends the photographs using snapchat now snapchat claims

00:36:39.080 you can send a photo using a five second self-destruct and after the recipient has seen

00:36:43.520 the photo for five seconds it will vanish and if they try to save the photo using a screenshot you

00:36:49.200 the sender will be notified snapchat is lying it knows that there's dozens of free apps out there

00:36:54.260 that will save the photo and the sender will not be notified the boy of course had installed one of

00:36:58.980 these apps. And he saved all the photos. School administrators later determined that he didn't

00:37:04.980 intend for anyone else to see the photos, but he was at a party and he set his phone down to grab

00:37:10.660 some chips and talk to some friends. Another boy came along that lock screen had not engaged,

00:37:15.540 found the phone, went to the gallery, found the photos, forwarded each of the girls' photos to

00:37:20.420 his own phone, posted each of the photos on his own Instagram. Within three days, everybody at

00:37:26.100 school had seen them boys this girl didn't even know were coming up to her and say hey emily

00:37:30.100 how about you put do a striptease for us this girl had a total meltdown she'd never had any

00:37:37.240 problems before um she'd been invited to a three-day ski weekend uh the girl the birthday 1.00

00:37:43.360 girl whose parents were hosting the ski weekend the birthday girl called this girl and said you 1.00

00:37:47.340 know i hate to make this phone call but my mom is totally freaking out because all the other moms

00:37:51.120 are freaking out and they're all saying that they won't let their daughter come if you're going to 0.72

00:37:55.020 be there because they all think you're now some kind of bad influence so I have to uninvite you 0.99

00:37:59.300 I'm really sorry I have to uninvite you girl totally melted down refusing to go to school

00:38:04.220 saying her life was over that the photos would always be out there because which is totally true

00:38:08.720 incidentally the school administrators made this boy take them down but by that time 20 other boys

00:38:13.020 had picked up the photos and reposted them I'm told they're still out there started cutting

00:38:18.180 herself with razor blades saying she wanted to die uh her life the parents took her to the doctor

00:38:24.240 doctor diagnosed depression, prescribed Lexapro, 10 milligrams and arranged for urgent psychotherapy

00:38:30.060 that accomplished nothing. So you now have a 12 year old girl with depression, not responding to

00:38:34.380 medication or psychotherapy. Who's at fault? The girl, her boyfriend, the other boy,

00:38:41.800 the parents are to blame. Look, this is a very grownup device. With this device,

00:38:48.020 I can take a photo and send a photo. And once I send that photo, I have no control

00:38:52.240 over what happens to it, over who sees it.

00:38:55.800 If you're going to put a device like this in the hands of a child,

00:38:58.520 then you are responsible for every photo they take

00:39:01.700 and everyone who sees it.

00:39:04.260 You must install parental monitoring software

00:39:06.720 if you're going to give a device to a child under 18.

00:39:10.500 And explain to your kid,

00:39:12.760 the app is going to see every photo you take as soon as you take it.

00:39:16.840 If it's anything inappropriate, it's going to pop up on my photo.

00:39:19.220 You're going to lose the device indefinitely,

00:39:20.920 and parents will push back.

00:39:22.240 Parents will say, look, I believe in privacy.

00:39:25.620 I don't want to see my kid's photo.

00:39:27.640 If she doesn't want to see my photo, if she doesn't want me to see her photos, I'm fine with that.

00:39:31.580 I don't want to see her photo if she doesn't want to see my photo.

00:39:33.600 And I say to that parent, look, privacy is great.

00:39:36.360 You want to share a photo privately?

00:39:37.700 Here's what you do.

00:39:38.280 You print it out on a piece of photo paper.

00:39:40.580 And then you take it over your friend's house and show it to them.

00:39:42.940 And then you shred it.

00:39:44.140 That's privacy.

00:39:45.040 There is no such thing as privacy when you share a photo with a phone.

00:39:49.660 And you know who didn't get the memo?

00:39:51.740 Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest men, shared photos with his girlfriend, and they were leaked.

00:39:58.600 And you know who else didn't get the memo?

00:40:00.200 General David Petraeus.

00:40:01.440 Same story a few years earlier.

00:40:02.940 He had all of his passwords and his two-factor authentication, thought it could not be hacked.

00:40:07.680 Anything can be hacked.

00:40:09.300 The moral of the story of Jeff Bezos and David Petraeus, don't share any photo with a device unless you're prepared for grandma to see it in the newspaper.

00:40:19.920 and you don't share that by preaching that you you communicate that by saying i've installed an app

00:40:27.300 on your phone do not share a photo do not take a photo unless you're prepared for everybody to see

00:40:35.040 it and and and again parent american parents will push back and they'll say oh come on my my daughter

00:40:40.280 is just going to google how do i get around parental controls on that nanny well i've actually

00:40:43.900 spoken to uh with employees at nanny and they told me that they have colleagues whose full-time job

00:40:49.600 is to google the phrase how do i get around parental controls on net nanny and if they find

00:40:54.120 that some kid has found a hole they patch it usually within hours and the app will update

00:40:58.120 you have to install parental monitoring software is net nanny the software that you're you're

00:41:04.940 saying parents can use to monitor the kids it's it's one of many apps i'm not endorsing any one

00:41:10.080 app uh ethics and public policy center has a wonderful uh online guide to the different

00:41:15.900 parental monitoring apps. That's Ryan Anderson's group, Ethics and Public Policy Center. They've

00:41:20.840 got a good online resource that reviews all the different rental monitoring apps. But yeah,

00:41:26.580 NetNanny is one, Bark, Circle, there's a bunch of them. I don't endorse any one app. They're all

00:41:31.000 very similar. They'll all give you a dashboard on your phone. They'll all light up if they see

00:41:35.840 anything inappropriate. But you've got to use one of these. You've got to install one of these on

00:41:40.400 your kid's phone and explain. What about, Dr. Sachs, the question of privacy? You'll hear

00:41:45.440 parents say, well, I need my child to trust me. And if she doesn't trust me, she's not going to

00:41:50.700 tell me anything. So if she knows I'm sneaking around on her phone, or I'm sneaking in her room

00:41:56.160 to read her diary, it's going to blow up to the relationship to where I'm no longer a resource for

00:42:01.500 her. Well, you know, there's good things and bad things about the American Academy of Pediatrics.

00:42:08.580 But in this domain of this question of how you balance that question of trust versus the dangers of social media and and smartphones, I think the American Academy of Pediatrics in this domain has done some very useful work.

00:42:28.740 They hired all the leading experts who spent two years reviewing all the research.

00:42:35.480 And the experts said, look, this is a new world and a new domain of immense risk and

00:42:40.680 toxicity.

00:42:42.820 And for girls, the risk is huge.

00:42:46.840 And once those photos are out there, they will never go away. 0.86

00:42:50.240 You Google this girl's name, you're still going to find those photos today.

00:42:53.780 It will always be out there. 1.00

00:42:55.720 And these girls don't understand the risk.

00:42:57.860 and you have to balance those risks. And the experts said in the official guidelines of the

00:43:05.680 American Academy of Pediatrics, quote, there should be no expectation of privacy when a child or

00:43:12.260 teenager under 18 is online. No expectation of privacy. That's the official guideline of the

00:43:17.360 American Academy of Pediatrics. A device with internet access should be in a public space like

00:43:23.140 the kitchen or living room. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which is a very left of center

00:43:27.640 organization as we may get to later um on the trans insanity in particular yes trans insanity 0.59

00:43:35.360 but in this domain they said a kid should not even have their device in their bedroom it should be in

00:43:42.420 a kitchen or living room because there should be no expectation of privacy when a kid is online

00:43:47.880 there's so much bad stuff out there let me ask you this though some of my audience wrote in

00:43:53.360 and they know how you feel they know how i feel about social media use and children

00:43:57.520 But like John Rich, a great singer, music superstar, he actually wrote in on my X account.

00:44:05.300 And his question was, I don't have the exact wording in front of me.

00:44:07.760 Hold on.

00:44:08.060 It was, what age is okay for social media, right?

00:44:12.720 With understanding the reality that at some point your child is going to figure out what Snapchat or TikTok or these apps are.

00:44:20.560 At what point would you introduce it to them?

00:44:23.080 Do you want it to happen while you're there and they're still in the home with you and you can talk about it?

00:44:27.120 or do you wait until they go off to college?

00:44:28.380 What do you think?

00:44:29.160 So my brand, if you like, is evidence-based.

00:44:32.380 When I make a recommendation,

00:44:33.680 I'm always going to show you a study or a series of studies.

00:44:37.020 Long-term, longitudinal studies.

00:44:39.740 Longitudinal cohort studies, you got it.

00:44:41.940 So Gene Twenge is one of our nation's leading researchers.

00:44:45.860 And back in 2019, she and her colleague Keith Campbell

00:44:48.660 did a huge study, 220,000 adolescents.

00:44:52.160 And on the X-axis is the time spent on social media.

00:44:54.920 And on the y-axis is the likelihood of becoming anxious or depressed.

00:44:59.440 And there is no rise in that trend line until you get past 30 minutes a day.

00:45:04.180 So 2019, 2020, 2021, I was telling parents up to 30 minutes a day on social media is fine.

00:45:13.520 But that study was published in 2019 based on research gathered in 2018.

00:45:20.300 That's before TikTok.

00:45:23.280 TikTok changed everything.

00:45:24.680 So researchers who study social media talk about basically three generations of social media.

00:45:29.800 So Facebook is first generation.

00:45:31.500 Facebook is about connecting you to people you know or you used to know.

00:45:34.880 On Facebook, you can connect with your first grade classmate, whatever.

00:45:40.200 Instagram is second generation.

00:45:41.980 So you not only connect with people you know, you can connect with celebrities.

00:45:45.960 TikTok is third generation.

00:45:47.460 It's totally different.

00:45:48.400 So you go on TikTok and TikTok begins by saying, I'm not interested in who you know.

00:45:52.800 i'm interested in what you like to watch tell me what kind of videos you like to watch okay

00:45:57.460 uh let me show you some videos and then the algorithm is watching you and the algorithm

00:46:02.860 is crazy good and it starts customizing what it's showing you and after an hour you're seeing things

00:46:08.980 you didn't even know were out there and it's it's so common to find teenagers say whoa tiktok knew i

00:46:15.480 was gay before i did tiktok knew i was trans before i did and and then in 2021 researchers

00:46:21.440 reached out to tiktok and said you know that the algorithm is really dangerous it's it's dragging

00:46:26.640 kids especially girls down in this rabbit hole of it's valorizing anorexia and self-harm you got

00:46:32.500 to change the algorithm and tiktok responded said okay we'll change the algorithm and then last year

00:46:36.780 the researchers said you didn't make it better it's you made it worse it's getting worse

00:46:40.860 and so i reached out to gene twangy and i said look look at the more recent studies

00:46:45.960 This there is no safe point anymore that it's shifted left. The danger doesn't begin at 30 minutes anymore. It begins at zero time. And Jean Twain responded. She sent me back an email saying the research now supports a total ban on social media for all teens, for all children up below 18 years of age.

00:47:09.760 And that is where I am now.

00:47:13.600 The newer research in the era of TikTok, no social media for any kids.

00:47:18.920 We can argue about whether it's 16 or whether it's 18, but the research now strongly supports

00:47:25.100 no social media for any kid in the English-speaking world under 16 or 18 years of age.

00:47:34.120 I mentioned the English-speaking world because there's an interesting factoid here.

00:47:39.680 You know, everyone's been talking about this rise in anxiety and depression that has occurred in the last 15 years.

00:47:46.360 And John Haidt and Gene Twenge and others have talked about how, oh, it's all because of the smartphones and the social media.

00:47:52.140 But one thing that John Haidt and Gene Twenge haven't talked about much is that look at Greece, look at Russia.

00:47:58.300 you have not seen that rise in anxiety and depression in greece and in russia even though

00:48:06.240 kids in greece and russia are just as likely to have smartphones just as likely to have social

00:48:13.260 media they're not they're not showing the rise in anxiety and depression well what's different

00:48:20.320 okay i've made the argument that american popular culture has become toxic in a way that that's

00:48:28.280 not true in Greece and Russia. American popular culture has changed in a way that it didn't

00:48:33.620 change in Greece and Russia. American popular culture has become post-Christian in a way that 0.68

00:48:39.020 has not, I'm not crowding up Russia as a role model by any means, but American popular culture 0.75

00:48:47.120 is a post-Christian culture. It's a toxic culture of envy and disrespect in a way that maybe is not 0.74

00:48:53.480 true in Greece and Russia. And I think that's important because just locking down the smartphones

00:48:58.820 is not enough. We also have to offer our kids a healthier culture.

00:49:06.780 Yes, this is so good to hear. I mean, I feel like we've all experienced this in our day-to-day lives

00:49:12.560 with the weird competitive strain amongst some kids where they're not rooting for their friends.

00:49:19.420 They, you know, if one friend gets a home run, instead of cheering him on, the other teammate is like, put me in, I need to get a home run.

00:49:27.880 You know, it's like, what?

00:49:28.700 This is a weird strain that we're seeing in today's kids too often, and that makes perfect sense. 1.00

00:49:37.060 And yeah, I mean, I think I've said this many times about the Russians.

00:49:39.380 I've been over there a few times, and they're actually a very loving people who think wonderful things about the American people.

00:49:45.760 our leaders have had obvious conflicts and you know we know what's happened in ukraine but it's

00:49:51.200 not to demonize the russian people if you went and spent time over there it's still a christian

00:49:54.940 nation they still have some fundamental beliefs that we could all get behind it's our country

00:49:59.840 that's lost its mind culturally and whenever you say that they think you're some sort of a russophile

00:50:04.280 but that's that's not what i'm saying it's not what tucker has been saying anyway i i know it's

00:50:08.880 not what dr sachs is saying there's so much more to go over there's tons of questions coming in by

00:50:12.440 the way, our audience can email me with questions for Dr. Sachs. You can still get on board. It's

00:50:17.240 megan at megankelly.com. You can do it right now, and we'll pick back up with him in just two

00:50:22.780 minutes. Don't go away. Last summer, the coolest place in the house was in your freezer. This year,

00:50:32.060 it's time to level up. Reliance Home Comfort has over 155,000 five-star reviews for delivering the

00:50:38.860 type of outstanding customer experience Canadians have counted on for over 60 years. Right now,

00:50:44.760 don't pay for 12 months on a featured air conditioner or heat pump. Call on the experts

00:50:49.200 that know how to beat the heat. Conditions apply. See website for details. The Heart and Stroke

00:50:56.560 Lottery is back with incredible one to two odds of winning. Make your biggest dreams come true 0.96

00:51:01.600 with the ultimate grand prize, $1 million cash, plus prizes like luxury SUVs, unforgettable

00:51:07.920 vacations and more. Your next win may be closer than you think. Buy tickets today at

00:51:13.000 hardenedstrokelobbery.ca to play for the loyalty bonus prize, $50,000 cash. Hurry,

00:51:18.660 the loyalty deadline is May 1st. Lottery license RAF 1527913. Must be 18 plus. Please play

00:51:24.700 responsibly. With me today, Dr. Leonard Sachs. He is the author of the book, The Collapse

00:51:30.440 of Parenting, How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grownups, which has just been updated

00:51:37.220 this year. Get your copy now, just in time for Christmas. Guys, great gift for the wives,

00:51:44.220 wives, vice versa. Grandparents, great gift for the parents. Everybody can get this in time for

00:51:50.260 the holidays, and I highly recommend this. Dr. Sachs is the expert. He doesn't suffer from the

00:51:55.760 woke mind virus. He's a true expert, both a doctor and a psychologist who's been dealing with children

00:52:01.920 and families for decades now, and just has spoken sense for as long as I can remember.

00:52:07.220 Okay, so explain the title in today's day and age, what that means when we treat our

00:52:14.600 children like grownups.

00:52:16.880 Right.

00:52:17.540 So in order for parenting to work, parents have to have authority.

00:52:24.000 So I actually begin the new edition with something that happened in the office just as I was

00:52:28.880 writing the new edition.

00:52:30.660 So mom brings her daughter in and she's sick.

00:52:33.360 the six-year-old girl, mom explains her daughter has a fever and a sore throat. So after mom

00:52:39.460 explains what's going on, I say, okay, time for me to take a look. Would you please open your mouth

00:52:43.900 and say, ah? And daughter shakes her head, no. And I say, okay, mom, looks like I'm going to need

00:52:49.720 your help here. Would you please ask your daughter to open wide and say, ah? And mom says, her body,

00:52:55.900 her choice. Okay. My body, my choice, longtime slogan of the abortion rights community, more

00:53:01.900 recently adopted by activists opposed to COVID vaccines, mom is using that slogan to defend

00:53:08.160 her daughter's refusal to allow me, the doctor, to look in her daughter's throat. So that's an

00:53:13.580 extreme example of what I mean by the collapse of parenting. Parents who think it's actually

00:53:18.580 virtuous to let kids decide, that's an extreme example and that's rare. Let me give you a much

00:53:24.340 more common, much more common example of what I mean by the collapse of parenting. So boys not

00:53:29.860 paying attention in school 13 year old boy not paying attention in school totally not paying

00:53:33.880 attention off the chart on what's called the connor scales which is the teacher's rating this

00:53:39.060 kid's not paying attention in any class parents take him to the child psychiatrist child psychiatrist

00:53:43.560 says well attention deficit disorder let's try vyvanse vyvanse medication tremendously helpful

00:53:49.540 boy's now doing great but he's jittery totally lost appetite palpitations parents see this article

00:53:57.100 I wrote for Time Magazine about the dangers of these medications.

00:54:00.080 They bring them to me for a second opinion.

00:54:02.120 And I do a more careful sleep study.

00:54:04.040 I do a more careful sleep history.

00:54:07.980 I asked the boy, do you have a video game console in your bedroom?

00:54:11.600 He said, of course, doesn't everybody?

00:54:13.120 I said, were you playing video games last night?

00:54:14.640 He said, of course, wasn't everybody?

00:54:16.600 When did you finish?

00:54:18.660 Oh, like 1.30, 2.00.

00:54:20.480 And mom's like, 1.30, you were playing video games 1.30 in the morning?

00:54:24.060 What were you playing?

00:54:25.160 Oh, RDR2.

00:54:26.400 Excellent game.

00:54:27.100 All right. So I say to mom, you've got to get the video game console out of his bedroom. No video game, no video games. And you've got to limit how much time he's spending playing video games. You know, max 30 minutes a night on school nights and no video games after nine o'clock at night and no video game console in the bedroom. And mom says, I couldn't take the video game console out of his bedroom. He'd totally freak out.

00:54:49.600 this is a parent who is unwilling to limit how much time her son is spending playing video games

00:54:59.320 she is uncomfortable exercising her authority that is very common and that is also what i mean

00:55:08.000 by the collapse of parenting parents who are uncomfortable exercising their authority and as

00:55:13.500 a result this kid is not paying attention in class he doesn't have attention deficit disorder

00:55:19.580 he's sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation perfectly mimics attention deficit disorder of the

00:55:26.700 inattentive variety. Vyvanse was immensely helpful. What's Vyvanse? What's Adderall?

00:55:33.460 They're amphetamines. They're speed. They compensate for the sleep deprivation. But

00:55:38.620 the appropriate remedy for sleep deprivation is sleep, not scheduled for amphetamines.

00:55:43.620 and the psychiatrist failed to do a careful sleep history.

00:55:48.780 And this is happening all the time.

00:55:50.760 And I see this a lot as a family doctor,

00:55:53.060 these kids who are being medicated

00:55:54.500 because the parents are not doing their job.

00:55:58.120 That's happening a lot.

00:56:00.460 How about the drive for good grades?

00:56:06.180 Because I had one parent write in saying,

00:56:09.420 how hard should I push my teenager?

00:56:12.580 in today's day and age with kids suffering from anxiety,

00:56:16.180 you know, if my kid is like, I'm striving for B's,

00:56:20.040 do I just say, good for you, honey,

00:56:22.060 you know, do what you think is right.

00:56:23.080 Or do I say, well, why not A's?

00:56:25.340 You know, maybe you don't have to play

00:56:28.340 two and a half hours of basketball.

00:56:30.100 Maybe you could take one of those hours and go for an A.

00:56:32.220 But parents are almost afraid to do that now

00:56:34.540 because, you know, our kids are all so stressed out.

00:56:38.080 Well, when I speak to parents,

00:56:39.640 I do a lot of presentations for parents.

00:56:41.620 and this is okay i don't want to come across the wrong way i'm not the book is not a rant against

00:56:47.440 bad parents the the objective of the book is to empower the parents to exercise their authority

00:56:53.920 to to encourage that parent to do the right thing to do what you know you should do that's what i'm

00:57:00.300 trying to do there so you asked about grades so when i speak to parents either individually or

00:57:06.880 groups, I will often say, I'll mention the longitudinal cohort study, which is a study

00:57:11.880 where you follow kids from childhood through adolescence all the way to 32, 40, 50 years

00:57:16.820 of age. What characteristic of a child best predicts good outcomes at 30, 40, 50 years

00:57:23.100 of age? Is it the grades that they got? No, it's not. It's character. It's honesty. It's

00:57:32.660 self-control. So it follows from that, that our top priority as parents is not top grades.

00:57:43.280 It's honesty and self-control. So good grades are great. There's nothing wrong with that.

00:57:51.480 But character and self-control and honesty are more important. And you know, as a family doctor,

00:57:57.560 I've seen a big change. 20 years ago, parents were more likely to say, I'd rather you get a C on the

00:58:03.840 test honestly than cheat and get an A. And that's the right thing to say. Today, I hear parents who

00:58:12.060 say, hey, you want to get into top university? You've got to have amazing grades. And there has

00:58:17.460 been a rise in cheating over the last 20 years, which I document. So you've got to be very cautious

00:58:22.860 about emphasizing good grades because a lot of kids are getting the wrong message. And there

00:58:27.800 has been a rise in cheating among American kids over the last 20 years. That was one of the things

00:58:33.220 that the Menendez parents allegedly told their kids before they killed them. You've got to get 0.96

00:58:38.600 straight A's. You have to win, period. It doesn't matter how you do it. You can cheat. You can steal.

00:58:43.440 Fine. What's important is to win. Just don't get caught. And it was kind of a fascinating thing

00:58:49.540 didn't end well? We're losing that moral compass. Being a good person and doing the right thing,

00:58:56.820 even if it hurts, is more important than winning, more important than getting a good mark. Again,

00:59:04.020 that was the lesson of the Andy Griffith Show a long, long time ago. It was the lesson of

00:59:11.240 happy days and family ties. It used to be the lesson that kids would get from American television.

00:59:16.800 It's not the lesson they get anymore, but it's a lesson that you as the parent have to teach.

00:59:22.360 But how do you teach drive?

00:59:27.020 Okay.

00:59:30.180 How do you teach motivation?

00:59:32.940 This is a real problem.

00:59:34.800 And there's a lot more going on than cultural factors are part of it.

00:59:42.980 And some of this is gender specific.

00:59:45.040 so uh let's talk about boys um testosterone levels have dropped

00:59:51.840 uh a lot in the last 50 years and even in the last 20 years and uh that's a major focus of

01:00:01.840 my book boys adrift and a lot of this is due to endocrine disruptors and turns out that boys

01:00:06.800 depend on testosterone for drive girls don't um and um so yeah i think that is part of the story

01:00:15.460 and you know when i first started looking into this years ago it sounded kind of weird and uh

01:00:22.040 uh but but there is actually very good research and i actually wrote a paper for the national

01:00:27.500 institutes of health published in their scholarly journal on this topic about how

01:00:30.920 plastic bottles uh the kind that that people drink bottled water out of actually contain

01:00:36.640 endocrine disruptors like diethyxothylate that lower testosterone levels so your son shouldn't

01:00:42.440 be drinking water out of a plastic bottle you should pour tap water into a steel canteen and

01:00:48.000 that's what you want to be drinking your your water out of uh don't microwave in plastic it's

01:00:53.260 it doesn't cost anything to follow these guidelines uh but and and it and it fixes the

01:00:58.680 testosterone levels. So yeah, there's different factors that affect. That's why I wrote a book

01:01:03.920 called Boys, called Boys Adrift, and a book for girls called Girls on the Edge, because the factors

01:01:08.700 are different. And another book called Why Gender Matters. Yes. Whoa, you've really done your own

01:01:13.860 work. I appreciate that. I read that when it came out, Dr. Sachs, and I remember finding it so

01:01:17.660 fascinating. And when the trans insanity exploded, I was like, this is the one guy I want to talk to, 1.00

01:01:21.900 because he wrote before all this nonsense that there are two different sexes. They are very, 1.00

01:01:27.600 very different and it matters. And now we're told, no, it's completely interchangeable.

01:01:34.480 Yeah. Well, and there's been a lot of change there. The first edition of Why Gender Matters

01:01:38.840 had half a paragraph on transgender. And then the publisher, Penguin Random House,

01:01:45.420 asked me to write a new edition, which I devote a lot of time to transgender because now it's a

01:01:50.860 thing. Yeah. But I know you've been making the point, you make the point here too, that

01:01:55.160 the male brain and the female brain are very, very different and that parents must understand

01:02:02.480 that. Yes. And even the trans activists should be honest about this. Like if you want to parade

01:02:08.020 around trying to look like a woman, that's your choice. But don't try to tell me that because you 0.99

01:02:13.580 feel like a woman, even though you're a man, you just are because all the studies showed that your 0.95

01:02:19.620 brain is different. You are, yes, your body's different, but your brain is different. And you 0.98

01:02:24.260 make the point in this book that parents need to understand that too, because you look at your

01:02:28.300 child, your boy child, and you interpret his behavior one way because you have an older

01:02:32.600 sister to that boy who at this stage was doing things very, very differently, maybe at a rapid

01:02:38.380 pace compared to the boy, and you're making no allowances for why gender matters.

01:02:45.480 Yes. So absolutely. So in my book, Why Gender Matters, I remind parents that girls develop 0.92

01:02:53.560 faster than boys. So if you have an older daughter, younger son, don't compare your son to your

01:02:59.200 daughter. And again, from my own practice, a parent of an 18-month-old boy said, you know,

01:03:07.120 when my daughter was 18 months old, I could bounce her on my knee, and I'd say,

01:03:10.840 and she'd say, and I'd say, and we could do that for like 20 minutes. We'd just crack each other

01:03:17.800 up. We'd have so much fun just making nonsense syllables. And I tried that with my son,

01:03:22.180 and somebody was riding their bike past the front door

01:03:24.660 and he went and looked at that

01:03:25.660 and then the house made a noise

01:03:27.060 and he went and looked at that.

01:03:28.240 He's very distractible.

01:03:30.200 And I Googled that

01:03:31.320 and it said it could be a sign of autism.

01:03:33.620 It could be a sign of autism.

01:03:35.540 What do you think?

01:03:36.980 Could it be a sign of autism?

01:03:38.680 I said, well, could be,

01:03:41.020 but it could also be a sign of boy.

01:03:43.640 But I could not reassure her

01:03:45.280 and she insisted on a formal evaluation.

01:03:47.500 So I said, all right,

01:03:48.700 treatment and learning centers in Rockville,

01:03:50.220 They're very good at play-based assessment for toddlers.

01:03:53.860 I shouldn't have done that.

01:03:54.940 That was a big mistake on my part.

01:03:57.280 She went there and she came back in tears.

01:04:00.080 She said they're very concerned.

01:04:01.340 They said his vocabulary is below average compared to the average 18-month-old.

01:04:05.140 The average 18-month-old should have a vocabulary of 65 words.

01:04:08.420 They estimate he only has a vocabulary of 40 words.

01:04:11.640 Well, actually, research shows the average 18-month-old girl has a vocabulary of 90 words.

01:04:16.880 Average 18-month-old boy has a vocabulary of 40 words.

01:04:20.220 So let's consider that statement. The average 18-month-old child has a vocabulary of 65 words.

01:04:26.240 Okay, 90 plus 40 is 130. 135 by 2 is 65. The average 18-month-old child has a vocabulary of

01:04:32.740 65 words. That's a true statement, but it's completely meaningless because a child is

01:04:36.940 either a boy or a girl. You've got to compare boys to boys and girls to girls. There's nothing 0.97

01:04:42.740 wrong with this boy. And he's perfectly fine. And this was years ago. He's gone on to be totally

01:04:49.080 fine. He does not have autism. He's not on the spectrum. Um, so yeah, if you have an older

01:04:55.600 daughter, younger son, don't compare your, your son to your daughter, compare boys to boys and

01:05:00.360 girls to girls. Let's talk about autism for a second, because it's of course very much in the

01:05:05.580 news and with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. up for potential HHS chief, he's been saying, you know,

01:05:14.240 is it environmental? There's so many toxins around us from the microplastics, which you just

01:05:18.500 mentioned, to the pollutants in our air, in our soil, and so on, on our food. He thinks it's too

01:05:26.880 much toxic overload. You have a different possibility that we should be considering

01:05:31.680 for the explosion in autism over the past decade or so.

01:05:35.560 Yes. And there is an explosion. So the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA,

01:05:40.400 one of our nation's leading scholarly journals, just a few weeks ago, published a study,

01:05:45.020 looked at the diagnosis of autism in this country in 2011 compared with 2022 and found in those 11

01:05:53.400 years between 2011 and 2022, the diagnosis for autism for children five to eight years of age

01:05:59.660 tripled. Why? Well, the authors of the study didn't suggest why, but the mainstream, the official

01:06:08.900 explanation is improved awareness and screening okay i'm not buying that i'm not buying it because

01:06:16.180 i'm a family doctor and i'm seeing firsthand what's going on and i can tell you okay there's a

01:06:21.660 autism is a spectrum at one at one end we've got this severely impaired kid who is not talking not

01:06:29.160 verbal profoundly impaired and there has been a rise there and at that severe end you know i might

01:06:36.240 actually agree with rfk junior that there's toxins in the environment and something bad is happening

01:06:41.200 there that's not the kid i'm talking about what's going on at the other end the kid who is functioning

01:06:47.100 the kid who who is uh in school but he's now being labeled as being on the spectrum okay here's

01:06:55.020 something that i actually know something about because i'm seeing this let's think about this

01:07:00.860 eight-year-old boy who's defined, who's disrespectful, who spits, who bites. 20 years

01:07:06.340 ago, the teacher would have said to the parents, look, this is totally unacceptable. Your son is

01:07:11.140 rude. When the teacher says to the parents, your son is rude, the burden of responsibility is on

01:07:18.660 the parents. They have to step up. They have to teach their son, okay, you need to behave

01:07:26.500 differently or else. But today, same boy, same behavior. The teacher is much more likely to say

01:07:35.180 something like, your son seems to have a deficit in social awareness skills. Have you thought of

01:07:43.480 having him evaluated? And he goes and he gets evaluated and sure enough, he gets labeled as

01:07:48.840 being on the spectrum. Well, you know what? He's not on the spectrum. He's a rude, disrespectful

01:07:55.800 boy immersed in this culture. He's just rude. Yes. Because the culture has changed. And the 0.99

01:08:05.220 first chapter, the new edition of my book, The Collapse of Parenting is titled The Culture of

01:08:09.800 Disrespect. In my own practice, a mom of an eight-year-old boy said, can you explain to me

01:08:15.440 what's going on with our son? His father and I never talk this way. And he thinks it's funny

01:08:21.540 to be disrespectful and talk back and i said to mom i said do you guys have the disney channel

01:08:26.940 nickelodeon nick jr and she said of course i said lock it down turn off do not allow disney

01:08:34.360 disney jr nickelodeon nick jr don't allow it and it stopped disney and nickelodeon they are

01:08:43.420 teaching kids that it's cute that it's funny to be disrespectful to talk back and mom called me

01:08:48.400 three weeks later and she said it stopped these shows are teaching kids that it's cute and funny

01:08:54.940 to be disrespectful and to talk back and and the culture has become a culture of disrespect

01:09:00.720 and and and it's not just disney and disney jr you know uh london's axe had this huge song

01:09:08.000 old town road 12 weeks 12 consecutive weeks and number one the most popular song in the united

01:09:13.900 States. And he sings, can't nobody tell me nothing. You can't tell me nothing. You know,

01:09:20.100 Bill Maher earlier this year had a huge bestseller with his book. And he observes in his book,

01:09:27.260 young people are beautiful, but stupid. Old people are ugly, but more likely to be wise. 1.00

01:09:34.120 So he continues, any successful culture will teach the young people to respect the old people 1.00

01:09:40.840 so that they can learn so the beautiful young people can learn from the wise old people 0.99

01:09:45.560 you can't tell me nothing can nobody tell me nothing this new culture of disrespect where

01:09:53.360 american popular culture from the disney channel to the most popular uh songs to tiktok and

01:09:59.680 instagram breaks bonds across across generation you can't tell me nothing if you can't tell me

01:10:05.400 nothing, why go to school? Why go to church? The new American culture of disrespect breaks bonds

01:10:12.420 across generations. And the result is kids in their bedroom looking at screens who want nothing

01:10:17.940 to do with their parents, nothing to do with church. And the result is kids who are adrift.

01:10:24.440 And this is a major factor driving this growing generation of kids who are adrift and looking for

01:10:31.420 meaning. This is, in our own family, it's a hard line. If the talk towards myself or my husband

01:10:38.300 gets disrespectful, they will get punished and they know it. They're usually very good kids.

01:10:43.620 They don't have a ton of opportunity to punish them, but that smart talk back to the parent

01:10:48.500 that's extremely disrespectful, we will punish them for that. But for this very reason, there

01:10:52.900 have to be societal boundaries within which we play. And if you're a child and you're speaking

01:10:57.860 to an adult, all the more so. This reminded me, just ask my team to pull it over, of a bit James

01:11:03.900 Carville did after the election, the Bill Clinton aide who helped get him elected. And he's a

01:11:10.540 Southerner, he's a Louisiana boy through and through, and he's not woke. He's a leftist

01:11:15.220 Democrat, but he is not a woke guy. And he went on a rant about young people within the campaign,

01:11:23.160 the Democratic Party, who think they know everything because someone hasn't set those

01:11:28.360 guardrails for them on understanding respect and respect for one's elders, and that one doesn't

01:11:34.140 know everything, especially as a young person. It's a great bet. We haven't had the chance to

01:11:38.480 play it for the audience. Here it is. The vice president was thinking about going on Joe Rogan's

01:11:42.660 show, and a lot of the younger progressive staffers pitched a hissy fit. Supposedly,

01:11:51.100 a campaign said that that wasn't

01:11:53.060 determined to fact it but they did

01:11:54.700 when you put a campaign

01:11:56.540 together and you hire young people 1.00

01:11:58.880 to do work let me

01:12:01.000 tell you exactly what you tell

01:12:02.880 these people what I would tell them

01:12:04.560 not only am I not interested 1.00

01:12:06.720 in your fucking opinion 0.99

01:12:08.560 I'm not even going to call you by your 1.00

01:12:10.840 name you're 23 0.99

01:12:12.800 years old I don't really give a shit 0.99

01:12:14.860 what you think if I 0.98

01:12:16.980 were running a 2028 campaign

01:12:19.020 and I had some little snot nose

01:12:20.920 23-year-old, saying, I'm going to resign if you don't do this, not only would I fire that 1.00

01:12:26.940 motherfucker on the spot, I would find out who hired him and fire that person on the spot. 1.00

01:12:35.340 That's amazing. What do you make of it, Dr. Sachs? 1.00

01:12:40.680 Well, he speaks very emphatically. But indeed, I do think that

01:12:46.860 we need young people to respect their elders and the anthropologists will would agree with

01:12:53.680 every successful culture teaches young people to respect their elders and we used to do that too

01:13:02.020 as recently as 20 30 years ago american culture was a culture of respect and the most popular

01:13:09.980 tv shows like the andy griffith show in the 1960s even buffy the vampire slayer in the

01:13:15.560 1990s. Little House on the Prairie. Yes. We're shows that taught, that had those strong

01:13:20.540 connections across generations. We have lost that. And, you know, you and I cannot change Hollywood,

01:13:27.700 but we can create a culture of respect in our own home. And again, that's what I'm trying to do in

01:13:32.420 my book, The Collapse of Parenting. We can't change Hollywood, but we can. I'm trying to

01:13:37.380 encourage parents and give parents some guidance. How do you do that in your own home? You got to

01:13:43.240 create that culture of respect within your own home. And you've got to be confident asserting

01:13:48.380 authority in your own home. It's not about discipline. It's about creating those bonds

01:13:53.460 of love and respect across the generations. This is reminding me too of the way we speak

01:14:00.020 to our children today or the way we're told we should speak to them today is just so vastly

01:14:04.360 different from how my parents spoke to me when I was growing up and just a couple of generations

01:14:10.620 ago the way it was. You know, you could make the case against the way parents like mine,

01:14:15.480 my mom, Linda, who I adore, you know, lines like, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry

01:14:20.340 about. Okay. That may have been a little far on the spectrum, but today we've gone so far around

01:14:27.420 the bend that we have lost our authority. And we're, I don't know what kind of psychobabble

01:14:32.240 these young parents are listening to, but it's encapsulated in this bit that was going around

01:14:37.180 instagram recently this is like a a prepared bit between what looks like a mom and daughter acting

01:14:43.540 but it it captures it perfectly watch be careful we don't say be careful anymore instead say

01:14:49.460 what's your plan here i don't even know my plan do you know your plan don't stop hit your sister

01:14:55.040 don't say stop say gentle gentle what gentle hands gentle hands is gentle everything gentle

01:15:01.400 everything i am so proud of you you're not supposed to tell kids you're proud of them anymore

01:15:05.260 why not that's putting the focus on you what i'm so proud don't say that should i say instead

01:15:10.680 you should be so proud i am so proud it's back on you again hurry up we gotta go don't rush we're

01:15:15.420 fine don't rush i thought we were in a hurry if you rush children it makes them anxious

01:15:20.080 don't worry you always rushed us and i'm anxious never rushed you we were always late

01:15:24.580 exactly and i was anxious because we were always late am i supposed to say that

01:15:29.380 gentle this way good job good choice thank you no say good choice watch out do you feel safe 0.92

01:15:41.360 here i don't feel safe about any of this shit watch out no it's do you feel safe here i'm sure 0.95

01:15:49.600 you've seen a lot of this too yeah so that's a riff on gentle gentle parenting which i talk about 0.94

01:15:55.200 in the new edition, which really wasn't a thing 10 years ago, but it certainly is now.

01:15:59.620 Gentle parenting means letting kids decide.

01:16:02.560 Gentle parenting means that good parenting means letting kids decide.

01:16:09.000 And gentle parenting is profoundly harmful.

01:16:12.600 And again, in the new edition, I present a lot of evidence that that is so.

01:16:17.440 Because the kids often are mistaken.

01:16:21.240 and you know what is what is childhood for i mean literally a four-year-old child has barely begun

01:16:29.100 a four-year-old horse is a mature adult and a horse is a bigger animal than a human so it can't

01:16:34.180 just be about biological maturity because a horse as i said is a bigger animal and a horse is fully

01:16:40.360 mature by four years of age a human is developing is immature for more years than most animals live

01:16:47.800 why why does it take so long we don't have to guess we have scholars like dr melvin connor at

01:16:53.680 emory who spent his entire career decades studying this question published this huge

01:16:58.220 tome 800 pages oxford university press uh titled the evolution of childhood comparing development

01:17:04.700 at our species with development other species and the answer he gives the reason it takes so many

01:17:10.680 years, is that it takes many years for parents to teach the child right and wrong. And so I cite a

01:17:19.660 column by a longtime columnist for the New York Times, Jennifer Finney Boylan, who wrote a column

01:17:25.040 about enlightened parenting, in which she asserts, and I'm quoting that, she says that enlightened

01:17:30.040 parenting means, and I quote, setting your child free to discover for themselves their own right

01:17:35.060 and wrong and if in so doing your child becomes a stranger to you then so be it that may seem

01:17:41.140 enlightened to some but it's not enlightened it's a dereliction of duty if you set your child free

01:17:46.560 to discover themselves their own right and wrong and they have a device with internet access what

01:17:51.480 they will discover is drake and bruno mars and megan the stallion and cardi b and and

01:17:56.840 transgenderism and mainstream pornography, your job is to teach your child right and wrong, 0.74

01:18:07.600 to inscribe your law on the hearts of your child. That's Deuteronomy 6. That's your job as a parent. 0.99

01:18:17.080 Don't set your child loose to discover for themselves their own right and wrong. That's

01:18:20.680 a dereliction of duty. Don't listen to the New York Times. Don't listen to National Public Radio.

01:18:25.100 do your job as a parent. That's the message I'm trying to communicate in my book, The Glapse of

01:18:30.220 Parenting. It's reminding me at our school, at our son's school, it's an all boys school, 1.00

01:18:36.340 they understand that students will make bad decisions and they'll do stupid things sometimes. 0.94

01:18:43.360 But the thing that will really get you expelled quickly is if you get called in to the head of 0.95

01:18:49.200 school's office and you lie about what you did. He's not calling you in there unless he's got

01:18:54.900 you dead to rights. About half the time they've got cameras in the school. So he's already seen

01:18:59.580 what you've done. And if you lie, you're out. He's pretty hardcore about that. If you own up to it

01:19:05.460 and confess you were a numbskull, you know, you did something really stupid and you're sorry, 1.00

01:19:09.600 you will live to fight another day. But to your point, it's about the value system. Like honesty 1.00

01:19:14.620 is a, it's just a deal breaker. You can't, we can't have anything, can't have character if we

01:19:19.740 don't have that fundamental basic honesty. Can I ask you something else? When another audience

01:19:23.740 member asked, how do I know at what age I can start talking to my kids more as adults, being

01:19:32.800 honest with them about my own thought process and why I'm not going to allow them to do this thing

01:19:37.700 that they want to do or about the problems as I see it in the family, outside, whatever. How does

01:19:44.020 one know what level of dialogue to have with one's kid? I think it really varies from one child to

01:19:50.420 next. And as a rule, girls mature faster than boys do. Girls reach full maturity in brains

01:19:58.380 development by about 22 years of age. Boys don't reach maturity in brain development until 30 0.72

01:20:03.640 years of age. So that explains a lot if you think about it. And when in doubt, wait. I find a lot

01:20:11.160 of parents that I think are confiding too early. And I know a boy who was very insecure because

01:20:19.660 his mom was confiding a single mom was confiding in her son about how they were broke um and and

01:20:27.200 um uh he took that literally and he thought that they literally didn't have money for food

01:20:32.820 and he was very insecure until he graduated and went off to to uh college and realized that they

01:20:41.660 actually were not that broke. And, and again, parents and sometimes single parents are a little

01:20:51.700 bit more prone to this because they don't have an adult confidant. And they sometimes I've observed

01:20:57.540 as a family doctor, they confide in their kids because they don't have a partner to confide in.

01:21:04.200 And they're confiding in their 12 year old when maybe they shouldn't be. And as a result,

01:21:09.160 that 12-year-old is insecure, more insecure than they have to be. So when in doubt, keep it to

01:21:16.180 yourself is one general rule I've learned. I seem to remember you being a big proponent of chores

01:21:22.160 and responsibilities for kids. Does that extend to, I had one audience member ask about, to what

01:21:30.000 extent is it appropriate for me to ask the older kids to help me with the younger kids? Because

01:21:34.860 the older kids have responsibilities of their own and they have grades they have to keep up and they

01:21:39.700 have sports they have to make and like is it a dereliction of your parental duty to sort of

01:21:44.460 fold in the older ones to help with the younger ones or is that a good thing no so there's a whole

01:21:50.140 chapter in the new edition titled humility uh which i call the most un-american of virtues

01:21:56.060 uh you know justin bieber had a big hit a few years back where he's saying i'm going to light

01:22:01.020 up the sky like lightning and this world will belong to me. Being proud and standing tall and

01:22:09.000 this world will belong to me. Those are very American characteristics. But we now have all

01:22:14.720 these studies where researchers find that the kid with the highest self-esteem at 15 years of age

01:22:20.240 is that individual who's most likely to be resentful and frustrated 10 years down the road.

01:22:27.340 because if I'm so amazing at 15, how come I'm working for a low wage in a cubicle at 25 years

01:22:33.340 of age? Actually, one of the best predictors of happiness and contentment at 15 years of age

01:22:40.120 is humility, being humble. And yes, absolutely. And you'll find that for search in my book,

01:22:47.200 The Collapse of Parenting, being humble, being grateful, powerfully and accurately predicts

01:22:53.440 happiness and contentment. How do you teach humility? And again, parents are confused.

01:23:00.280 They don't get this at all. When I speak to parents about the virtue of humility during

01:23:04.760 question and answer, a mother said, I don't want to teach my daughter to be humble. That's

01:23:08.940 ridiculous. I wanted to have my daughter to have a high self-esteem. So when that big job 0.97

01:23:13.880 opportunity comes along, she'll go for it. I want to teach my daughter to be humble. That's

01:23:17.840 That's ridiculous. I said, mom, with all due respect, you're confused. You're confusing being 0.99

01:23:23.980 humble with being timid. Those are not the same thing. They're very nearly opposites. And the

01:23:30.000 virtue you want for your daughter in the situation you're describing when a big job opportunity comes

01:23:34.320 along, the virtue you want for your daughter is not high self-esteem. The virtue you want for your

01:23:41.600 daughter in that situation is courage. Courage means you know your inadequacies, your failures,

01:23:51.020 your shortcomings, and you find the strength to move forward anyhow. There is no courage without

01:23:57.720 fear. High self-esteem is not the virtue that you're looking for. High self-esteem leads to

01:24:04.300 frustration and resentment. And I can tell you this firsthand. I had a girl in my own practice

01:24:09.860 who at age 15 had very high self-esteem. She wrote a short story and her English teacher

01:24:16.520 wrote on it, A+++, you have a spark of the divine fire. And she went on to write several novels,

01:24:23.640 couldn't get an agent, couldn't get a publisher. And at 23 years of age, she is seething with

01:24:28.560 resentment and frustration and envy. Why did that girl get her novel published? I can't even get an 0.57

01:24:34.640 agent. I can't get a publisher. High self-esteem leads to frustration and envy. So you want to

01:24:40.740 teach humility. Yes, you do. How do you teach humility, the right kind of humility? It begins

01:24:47.460 with chores. It begins with chores. And again, many parents don't get this. Many parents don't

01:24:52.620 get this. And they're like, okay, I want my daughter to get good grades. And we have the

01:24:59.840 resources. We can hire a housekeeper. My daughter's job is school. Her job is school. So we can hire

01:25:05.460 a housekeeper to do the chores. Many parents have said this to me. And the unintended message they're

01:25:11.460 sending to their daughter is you're too important to make your bed. Don't do that. Don't send that

01:25:17.840 message. Don't send that message. Chores is a great way to teach humility. And throughout the

01:25:24.520 book, I follow the Phillips family, a family I've known now for 30 years. And it's an amazing story

01:25:30.160 of an amazing family, Bill and Janet Phillips and their four sons. And I've been in touch with

01:25:38.700 this family now for 30 years. And it's an affluent family, a big home in a mansion in

01:25:46.500 Potomac, Maryland. And they had the money, they could have hired landscapers, but they didn't.

01:25:51.700 They insisted that their four sons do all the chores.

01:25:55.560 And I asked Janet, why did you do that?

01:25:57.840 And she said, yeah, we could have hired landscapers, but I wanted them to learn the meaning of work, the value of work.

01:26:05.220 And I quoted from her words in the book that, yeah, even if you have the money, you need to teach your kid to do this.

01:26:13.320 And her son, Andrew, really one of the most amazing athletes I ever knew, have ever known in my 30 years as a family doctor, was recruited by Stanford, played on the Stanford football team alongside Andrew Luck.

01:26:30.660 But he was playing at the Maryland program after 10th grade in high school.

01:26:39.920 And the coach there had just said what a great football player he was and how he wanted to recruit him to play in Maryland.

01:26:45.740 And his father said, oh, Andrew, I didn't tell you.

01:26:48.000 You're going to be working on one of my boats this summer.

01:26:52.420 He owned a fishing business, scraping guts off the deck.

01:26:56.220 and andrew was so upset he wanted to do all this fun stuff this summer and instead he's scraping

01:27:01.380 dead fish off of a salmon fishing boat next to this guy has just been released from prison a 0.80

01:27:08.280 convicted felon drug dealer uh mexican is talking about coming to jesus in the state penitentiary

01:27:14.460 and but andrew said you know i learned something uh working alongside this drug dealer has come

01:27:21.180 to Jesus, something I would never have learned at the upscale camp, learning about the value

01:27:30.580 of hard work, learning humility, humility, the most un-American of virtues.

01:27:36.500 You need to teach your kid humility.

01:27:38.800 Humility leads to contentment and happiness.

01:27:43.380 Use the kids, use the holders to take care of the youngers and use them around the house

01:27:47.740 and use them on everything.

01:27:49.120 that I think it feels very foreign to think of a parent you know if your child is like

01:27:57.080 I really think I'm going to do something great in this world like to be like now my mother would

01:28:03.220 have said you might and you might not we really haven't seen any signs that you'll do that yet

01:28:09.140 but you know good luck that's truly that's how my mom raised me but I feel like I couldn't say

01:28:15.620 that to my child. I don't know what, I think I'd probably say, yes, you will, sweetheart. I don't,

01:28:19.960 what, how would you handle expressions of, from a child of, you know, hope about their own future

01:28:26.560 like that? Like I, I see myself as destined for something wonderful. I don't, whatever,

01:28:31.800 however you want to phrase it. I would encourage my child to have

01:28:37.900 their loves properly ordered. It was a phrase going back to St. Augustine

01:28:43.520 to love god first make sure you want the right things for the right reasons so if my daughter

01:28:53.800 for example wanted to be an actress why do you want to be an actress you want to be an actress

01:28:59.120 because you're inspired by the challenge of trying to become someone else and to get inside

01:29:06.480 that person's head and persuade the audience that you are that person that's great that is great and

01:29:11.700 I totally support that and endorse that. If you want to be an actress because you want to be rich

01:29:15.720 and famous, that's the wrong reason. Why do you want this? What are you in this for? 0.85

01:29:23.620 Know yourself, know your motivation, want the right things for the right reasons. You got to

01:29:28.540 dig down deeply, know who you are, and be headed in the right direction for the right reason.

01:29:33.880 Got to know yourself. So good. I've been thinking about my mom a lot lately. She just came for a

01:29:39.880 is it? She's hilarious. And, uh, there was this meme going around on, on Instagram that read as 1.00

01:29:47.260 follows. I'm going to botch it a little bit. It was something to the effect of the hardest thing

01:29:50.820 about being a mom or a parent is you, you are raising the one thing you can't live without

01:29:58.720 to be able to live without you. And of course I was like, Oh my God, it's true. This is

01:30:04.740 heartbreaking, you know, instant lump in the throat and tears welling. And I'm sentimental

01:30:10.820 like that. And my mom actually was in for a visit and my daughter was in a play. So we went

01:30:14.900 and I showed it to my mom who's 83 now. And she laughed. Linda, it's just, she's tough.

01:30:26.140 And she raised me in a tough way, but it worked out, you know, and I think about all this stuff.

01:30:30.460 like I never was told I had to get straight A's. I didn't get straight A's. No one ever hassled me

01:30:35.620 over it. I was never told I was special. It was all the opposite stuff that now I've sort of

01:30:40.180 been making fun of for the past 20 years. But you know what, Doc? Maybe my mom was on to something.

01:30:46.080 I don't know. Yeah. It reminds me of my own mom, the late Dr. Janet Sachs, pediatrician.

01:30:53.500 And I was the youngest of three boys. And I remember when we were at a friend's house

01:30:58.460 And one of the other moms said, oh, Jackie, your youngest is going to be leaving soon to go to

01:31:05.220 college. And she said very coolly, she said, well, they do grow up, you know, that this is what's

01:31:12.840 supposed to happen. But again, a lot of parents are confused about this. And again, in my own

01:31:19.420 practice, husband and wife were planning a ski vacation, and they wanted their 13 year old to

01:31:26.480 come with them. And she said, well, you know, I'm not that big on skiing. How about if I just stay

01:31:31.120 at Arden's house, you, you and dad go away and I'll stay at Arden's house. And mom was very proud

01:31:35.920 of this. And she was boasting to me that her daughter did not go on the ski vacation. And I

01:31:41.360 said, that's not good. You should have insisted that she come with you. At age 13, your daughter's

01:31:49.980 primary attachment should be to you, the parents. And again, parents are confused. At age 13,

01:31:57.760 the primary attachment should still be to the parents. When that attachment breaks too soon,

01:32:03.040 and her primary attachment is to her 13-year-old friend, that's too soon. Because her primary

01:32:10.620 attachment at that age should still be to her parents. When it breaks too soon-

01:32:15.160 What age is not too soon?

01:32:17.820 18.

01:32:19.060 18.

01:32:20.420 At 13, 14, 15, 16 years of age, the primary attachment should still be to the parents.

01:32:26.720 And we've got so much research now showing that when it breaks too soon, at 23 years of age, now that girl is still now going to be texting her parents and saying, I don't know what to do.

01:32:37.660 What should I do, mom?

01:32:38.920 And we've got so many of these stories now.

01:32:41.100 And not just stories.

01:32:42.700 We've got data.

01:32:43.640 We've got this explosion of kids in their 20s and even 30s who are now living with their parents.

01:32:51.340 There are more 30-year-olds living with their parents than has ever been the case in American history.

01:32:57.520 It's a weird demographic reversal of failure to launch, of young people who now are unable to live independently because the acorn broke open too early.

01:33:12.560 is the analogy I use in the new edition

01:33:15.740 of The Collapse of Parenting.

01:33:17.820 These kids broke out on their own at 12 years of age

01:33:20.940 and hung out with their primary attachment

01:33:25.580 was their 12-year-old peers at 12, 13, 14, 16 years of age.

01:33:30.420 And now at 25 years of age,

01:33:32.420 they don't know how to live independently.

01:33:35.540 They did not develop normally.

01:33:37.140 Let me ask you this.

01:33:38.120 So I got to take a break,

01:33:39.060 but I want to ask you this question when I come back.

01:33:40.820 so how did any of us who were raised in the 70s or before survive because most of us had parents

01:33:48.620 who totally ignored us and they were not the primary person really in our lives we were kind

01:33:53.360 of alone and independent latchkey but we wound up okay oh that's a tease more with dr sex right

01:34:00.000 after this so doc what do you make that so those of us who grew up in the 70s pretty much without

01:34:05.700 parents who turned out fine. Absolutely. It was a much healthier culture. We're talking about the

01:34:12.480 culture of the Andy Griffith Show, Happy Days, Family Ties. And again, this is not a guess,

01:34:18.300 this is not nostalgia. And I talk about this in the book and I talk about how the culture has

01:34:22.520 changed and the culture of the last 15 years has become a much more toxic culture, a culture of

01:34:28.860 envy and disrespect. And this is why the burden on parents now is much greater because now they

01:34:35.620 have to do much more uh they have to do things that your parents never had to do they have to

01:34:41.340 provide a culture which your parents didn't have to do your parents didn't have to be there

01:34:46.240 for that but now parents today have to do so much more they have not only to provide a culture they

01:34:51.720 have to block out all the toxicity and harm of the bad toxic culture of the disney channel and

01:35:00.520 of TikTok and Instagram, and they have to provide a good, healthy culture. And they don't even know

01:35:07.520 it. Many parents are not even aware of all the bad things that the culture is doing. So again,

01:35:13.640 the mission of the book, the objective of the book is to wake parents up to make them aware that,

01:35:18.760 look, your TV is an agent of this really bad culture. And you don't have to turn off the TV,

01:35:28.580 uh but but but block out the disney channel you know home home and garden television that's okay

01:35:34.720 the history channel is okay but not the disney channel uh and and your your your laptop is fine

01:35:40.920 you can watch the megan kelly show but but not youtube youtube is spreading a lot of really bad

01:35:46.100 stuff uh if you're going to watch youtube make sure you're there so you can watch the megan

01:35:51.440 kelly show but not not not andrew tate for goodness sake oh my gosh i agree warning parents

01:35:57.840 to block out the bad stuff, to, to all the things that you've got to know now as a parent,

01:36:03.020 because American culture has changed. That's why it's so important.

01:36:08.020 We have two minutes left with the SiriusXM audience. We're going to continue this over

01:36:11.480 on podcast and youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. But in the two minutes we have left, one of our

01:36:15.620 audience members wrote in, how do I deprogram a kid from the woke mind virus without losing them?

01:36:24.460 You know, in our family, we've done a pre-inoculation against it, but a lot of parents got swept, their kids got swept into this, you know, when they didn't even know to inoculate them.

01:36:36.620 So what's the answer to that one?

01:36:38.280 I've got a chapter in the book for that parent, and the chapter is titled Enjoy.

01:36:44.160 And actually, the new chapter is titled Joy, J-O-Y.

01:36:48.660 And basically, I would say, do a vacation.

01:36:56.160 Just you and your kid, you and your family together, go someplace fun and do something

01:37:01.940 fun with your kid.

01:37:02.860 And they may be kicking and screaming.

01:37:05.120 And I describe a father and son where exactly that happened.

01:37:09.040 And the son didn't want to go and was kicking and screaming, didn't want to go.

01:37:13.420 That has actually worked.

01:37:14.740 That is the one thing that has actually worked.

01:37:16.560 just doing fun things together with your kid, not lecturing them, just doing fun things with

01:37:23.140 your kid is the natural God-given way to reconnect with your child.

01:37:28.680 Wow. That's excellent. It's back to your core message. More time with you, more time around

01:37:35.600 the dinner table, more time with your values and bonding with you and reestablishing that

01:37:40.480 close relationship. And I know we talked about last time, don't vacation with your children's

01:37:45.320 friends. No, they cannot bring a friend on the vacay. Those are for families to reconnect with

01:37:50.880 one another because those relationships are so critical to your child's wellness for reasons

01:37:56.120 like this. So speaking of the woke mind virus, part of what it does is teaches children to

01:38:02.060 prioritize identity over everything with skin color or some alleged weird sexual proclivity

01:38:10.440 or some alleged gender spectrum nonsense,

01:38:14.540 but it also leans in to any weakness, 0.69

01:38:22.360 illness, alleged mental defect.

01:38:26.180 You know, I was saying not long ago,

01:38:28.480 in today's day and age,

01:38:29.900 your kid cannot get into a good college by writing,

01:38:32.040 I came from a loving family

01:38:33.500 where I was raised with great values

01:38:34.940 and two present loving parents

01:38:36.440 who were there for me to set boundaries.

01:38:39.520 You've got to say you've got some phobia, some issue, and there's a chapter in the book called

01:38:45.000 what is, it's about normophobia, normophobia. So can you explain that?

01:38:50.320 Yes, absolutely. So 15 years ago, I wrote a book called Girls on the Edge,

01:38:57.440 and the girls I interviewed back then wanted to be effortlessly perfect. That was a thing

01:39:02.660 back in 2009. And then more recently, the publisher asked me to write an updated version,

01:39:08.660 And I found that girls today don't want to be effortlessly perfect. 0.98

01:39:12.760 That's boring. 0.99

01:39:13.680 That's lame. 1.00

01:39:14.360 That's basic white bitch. 1.00

01:39:16.160 And, you know, who wants to be that? 1.00

01:39:18.280 And the words that kids use on social media that they teach others to use kind of reinforce that. 0.83

01:39:25.380 Are you gender conforming or are you gender nonconforming? 0.94

01:39:29.800 Well, who wants to be conforming?

01:39:31.280 Are you neurodivergent or are you neurotypical?

01:39:35.820 You know, who wants to be typical? 0.82

01:39:37.040 You know, that's boring.

01:39:37.680 divergent, you know? Who wants to be typical and conforming? You want to be divergent and

01:39:42.480 non-conforming. And so Mary Harrington has coined this term, normophobia. Kids don't want to be

01:39:52.360 normal. And this is a growing issue. It's not true of all kids, but it's true of a growing

01:39:57.180 number of kids. They don't want to be normal. It's not cool to be normal. And this is really

01:40:06.520 something that has spread on american social media on tiktok and instagram you got to talk

01:40:11.580 about how you are anxious how you're depressed or how you're struggling with your gender identity

01:40:17.980 or how you're wrestling with being trans or or or you're non-binary or whatever you know 70 years

01:40:25.060 ago c.s lewis wrote this book for kids uh the magician's nephew and and he said that the problem 0.99

01:40:31.940 about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. 0.99

01:40:38.140 And I substitute stupider for anxious or depressed. The trouble with trying to make yourself more 0.99

01:40:42.460 anxious or more depressed than you really are is that you very often succeed. The whole point of

01:40:47.560 cognitive behavioral therapy is that a big part of being anxious and depressed is that you're

01:40:52.660 making yourself anxious and depressed. And as a psychologist and a family doctor, I can tell you

01:40:57.420 a lot of these kids are making themselves anxious and depressed. They're talking themselves into

01:41:01.960 being anxious and depressed. And again, we mentioned earlier that why is this not being

01:41:08.320 seen in Greece and Russia? Well, I don't speak Greek or Russian, but I talk with people who do.

01:41:14.800 And I can tell you, this is not a thing in Greece and Russia. Greek and Russian kids don't see

01:41:18.720 anything cool about talking themselves into being anxious and depressed. This is a uniquely American 0.99

01:41:24.300 english-speaking world weirdness i just came from canada where this is definitely a thing as well

01:41:29.120 and american parents need to understand how toxic and how weird this is we need to teach our kids

01:41:37.180 there's nothing cool about being anxious or depressed and we need to disconnect our kids

01:41:41.880 from the toxic culture that is spreading this which is very much part of this woke mind virus

01:41:46.920 thing there's nothing cool about being anxious or depressed or lesbian or gay or bisexual or

01:41:52.860 non-binary or trans, it is good to be healthy. It is good to be straight. There's nothing wrong

01:42:00.360 with that. And again, you need to create a culture in your own home where it is fine to be normal.

01:42:09.320 It's one of the, like a related offshoot of this problem is the nonstop desire to discuss one's

01:42:17.140 problems in the school setting. Abigail Schreier wrote a book about this recently,

01:42:20.980 bad therapy. But more and more, the schools, I will say, especially the girls' schools,

01:42:27.480 want the kids to discuss trauma. Has anything bad ever happened to you? What did that feel like?

01:42:35.440 Has anyone suffered a loss or a death in the family? What did that feel like? And then they're

01:42:41.320 supposed to go off and do math. What do you make of this leaning into discussing your trauma

01:42:47.140 in the school setting by some school psychologist who may or may not have any sort of abilities to

01:42:53.520 do that kind of thing with a kid? Yeah, so-called trauma-informed therapy, I think,

01:43:01.340 does not have a place in a public school setting. And I don't mean a, I mean, in a setting where

01:43:10.260 there's a bunch of kids around, the classroom should not be group therapy. The objective in

01:43:16.120 the classroom, the first objective should be to teach the content, not to conduct informal group

01:43:21.600 therapy with untrained therapists. So on that point, I agree with Abigail Schreier.

01:43:28.800 Let's talk about, and forgive me, we covered this the last time, I don't remember, but you know,

01:43:32.540 my kids are getting into their teens now. So this is not yet relevant, but I'm sure will be relevant

01:43:36.760 in the next five, seven years.

01:43:40.920 Drinking, right?

01:43:42.920 Like, I don't know.

01:43:45.760 I'm sure you'd see signs on your child

01:43:48.220 if you're an attentive parent.

01:43:49.600 At some point, you would see signs

01:43:50.760 once your child starts drinking socially,

01:43:53.240 if they start drinking socially,

01:43:55.160 especially when they get more up into like senior year.

01:43:58.660 College, you're not gonna be able to control

01:44:00.240 what happens at college.

01:44:01.120 But how do you see that?

01:44:03.840 Because let me tell you, in my mom's circles,

01:44:05.740 There are all sorts of opinions on like, you're not going to stop it, like walk them through, like don't have more than one, don't have a mixed drink, you know, set some guardrails for them.

01:44:16.260 Or there's moms who are like, absolutely not.

01:44:18.840 Don't, you know, it should be shamed.

01:44:20.520 Talk to them about the dangers of it.

01:44:22.600 Slippery slope, all that. 0.99

01:44:24.260 Or moms who are like, eh, you know, we host parties and we actually give them, let them have a couple of drinks. 0.99

01:44:30.260 We just make sure nobody's driving. 0.83

01:44:31.440 So your thoughts on that issue?

01:44:33.240 well i don't think that uh kids should be uh drinking i think the dangers are clear i'm

01:44:42.400 actually more concerned as a family doctor with vaping i see uh vaping is more popular

01:44:47.320 than drinking right now uh and it is spreading uh i think kids need to be aware of the dangers

01:44:55.340 um but it's really more of a issue of what's popular uh and if all the other kids are doing it

01:45:03.720 it's really hard for kids uh not to if everyone else in their group is doing it uh so you need

01:45:10.740 to be aware of what all the kids are doing um again i talk about in my um in in the in my book

01:45:18.500 the Collapse of Parenting, the Phillips family, Mr. Phillips had a breathalyzer. And he would

01:45:25.040 insist on if the boys were popular. And so kids would come to their home from other parties. And

01:45:34.220 if a kid appeared intoxicated, he would insist that the kid blow into the breathalyzer. And if

01:45:41.960 the kid was drunk, he would insist that the parents come and pick up the kid and drive them

01:45:47.220 home. And that very quickly became known. And everyone would say, well, you know, the crazy

01:45:52.700 Phillips dad, he's got the breathalyzer. And that, yeah. And that had interesting consequences 0.88

01:45:58.880 because people would say, well, you know, the crazy Phillips dad, he's got the breathalyzer.

01:46:04.520 And that would give other kids an excuse not to drink because they would say, well, I'm going to

01:46:10.180 the Phillips place. So I can't drink. You want to give kids an excuse not to drink. So by all

01:46:17.380 means, buy a breathalyzer and have it at the home. And that will give your kid an excuse not to

01:46:24.380 drink. So your kid can say, well, I cannot drink because my dad's got a breathalyzer. He's going to

01:46:31.500 insist on testing me when I get home. Think about excuses you can give your kid. You want to be the

01:46:38.420 evil parent. You want your kid to be able to say, I can't do that because my evil parents will do

01:46:43.660 X. My dad will make me blow in the breathalyzer. Breathalyzers are cheap. Give your kid an 0.84

01:46:49.640 opportunity to blame you for doing the right thing. All right. And how about sexual activity?

01:46:56.180 So I believe that sexual activity is intended for a married couple, and I believe that we want to teach that to our kids.

01:47:14.700 and I again describe Marlo Phillips a true story using her real name in the book her parents had 0.94

01:47:28.000 that same belief and they were strict they would not allow her to be alone with a boy throughout

01:47:34.800 her high school years and she was like that is so ridiculous my best friend she was alone with

01:47:40.560 her boyfriend the entire weekend her parents were away she was alone with her boyfriend the entire 0.95

01:47:44.960 weekend and i'm not allowed to be with a boyfriend with a boy for this is child abuse i'm gonna i'm

01:47:51.220 gonna call child protective services and her mom said all right here's the phone she said i'm gonna 0.97

01:47:55.340 have to be in therapy for the rest of my life because of the way you guys are abusing me 1.00

01:47:59.280 uh and then she went away to college she went to university of virginia charlottesville 0.96

01:48:04.480 and she told me at the beginning of her second year she had an epiphany

01:48:08.020 she suddenly realized i'm the only girl here who's not going to have to be in therapy for the rest of 0.76

01:48:14.560 my life because of the way my parents treated me she said all these other girls here they're coming

01:48:19.560 to me they're saying do you think this picture i'm putting on instagram do you think it's too 0.99

01:48:23.960 skanky or maybe not skanky enough do you think i'm i'm i'm giving oral sex to too many guys or 0.99

01:48:28.960 maybe not enough guys and she wants to grab these girls and say have you no dignity have you no 0.99

01:48:36.060 self-concept that all you care about is what the other guys think and she realized my parents may

01:48:44.700 raise me right that i have dignity that i have self-concept concept that my self-concept does 0.96

01:48:51.080 not depend on what the boys think of me and yeah it's a toxic culture for girls out there that's 1.00

01:48:59.720 all about what the boys think of how you look and getting down on your knees and giving oral sex 1.00

01:49:05.940 to other guys. And yes, the best parent is both strict and loving. And the mainstream culture 1.00

01:49:17.980 right now is about girls getting down on their knees and giving oral sex to boys they barely 1.00

01:49:22.540 know. You don't want that for your daughter. And you have to make that very clear. 1.00

01:49:28.880 So you talk about it explicitly and encourage her to make these different choices.

01:49:33.840 You insist on it, yeah.

01:49:36.480 You have to, the best parent is both strict and loving.

01:49:39.600 And American parents are confused.

01:49:41.100 They think you have to choose between being strict or loving.

01:49:45.000 But the best parent is both strict and loving.

01:49:48.120 A follow-up on the normophobia discussion a minute ago,

01:49:53.020 because we talked on our last episode about the trans stuff and children,

01:49:57.020 and so much has happened.

01:49:59.040 I mean, a week is like a year on that front these days.

01:50:02.200 the Supreme Court just heard a big case on it and so on. But we've seen a few things in the news

01:50:07.360 lately that have been pretty disturbing. And I'd love to get your take. In the wake of that Supreme

01:50:12.300 Court case, CNN decided to bring on a bunch of children who CNN says are allegedly trans,

01:50:20.280 you know, believing that they're in quote, the wrong body and are actually the opposite sex of

01:50:24.480 the one they are, in some cases with their parents, to talk about just how awful the fact

01:50:30.780 that their necessary medication is being debated by the U.S. Supreme Court. What was at issue in

01:50:35.660 that case, for those not aware, is the some odd half of the United States have passed laws banning

01:50:42.980 puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children, for children, for minors. And because

01:50:48.340 it's been found by objective studies in places like the UK and elsewhere, that they actually

01:50:54.280 are potentially very dangerous for children. And they can sterilize you and remove all sexual

01:51:00.420 function and pleasure for the rest of your life? And how can a 10-year-old consent to any of that?

01:51:04.560 So CNN puts on this panel and they have this 10-year-old child who I believe is a boy who's

01:51:12.660 posing as a girl named, I don't know the kid's name, but the boy posing as the girl is trying

01:51:22.380 to express their fear over this country and what's happening now. And I'd love to get your

01:51:29.320 thoughts on this clip it's uh is it sat five kelly let's play it what concerns have you had

01:51:35.220 about speaking out that i'm gonna be like murdered like one day i'm gonna be walking down the street

01:51:44.060 and somebody's gonna come up and like shoot me or something that's a really scary thing to be

01:51:49.400 worrying about at 10 years old yeah that should not be a worry michelle what's going through your

01:51:56.460 mind as you hear your daughter say this? It's hard to hear her say that and she

01:52:05.040 asked me three three questions after she heard who won the election. Are we gonna

01:52:11.080 have to move? Are they gonna take me away from you? And am I not gonna be able to

01:52:18.480 get my medicine. It's just, it's frightening. Your thoughts? Well, I'm very troubled because

01:52:30.840 so much of this is an artifact of modern medicine. Recall that synthetic hormones

01:52:39.220 were not a thing until really 80 years ago. 1.00

01:52:46.360 This entire transgender movement is a creation of modern medicine. 1.00

01:52:51.980 It was not with us before the 20th century. 1.00

01:52:56.900 Let's be straight. 0.57

01:52:58.340 Lesbian gay has always been with us.

01:53:00.820 It's mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. 0.62

01:53:04.380 Transgender is not a thing. 0.68

01:53:07.560 Despite claims made by the transgender movement, the notion that there have always been boys who insist they're girls and girls who insist they're boys is really a very modern development. 0.97

01:53:20.720 It's a creation of modern medicine. Those medicines that that child talked about didn't exist a century ago, didn't exist a thousand years ago, could not have been obtained a hundred years ago. 0.84

01:53:35.140 And to what extent is this a real biological phenomenon? To what extent is this transgender movement created by the cultural movement and the politics? 0.66

01:53:48.160 You know what? We don't actually have to guess. Earlier this year, a team of researchers at Stanford Medical School did a study of 1,500 young adults, 20 to 35 years of age, and looked at their brain activity.

01:54:08.560 These are young people, men and women, 20 to 35 years of age, and they are awake and

01:54:16.480 they're in an MRI scan, and you're looking at their brain activity.

01:54:21.100 Now, all human brains have a fingerprint, a neural fingerprint that is more unique to

01:54:26.340 you than your own fingerprint on your finger.

01:54:29.420 That's been known for many years, and the researchers wanted to know, does a man's

01:54:35.340 fingerprint differ from a woman's fingerprint?

01:54:38.000 um and the image that they um obtained that the graph that they showed is really astonishing

01:54:47.000 um uh and there it is um so the women the listening audience it shows in the top left quadrant

01:54:54.920 yes a bunch of red dots in the bottom right quadrant a bunch of blue dots and there's

01:54:59.560 zero overlap the blue is yes there's no overlap so the the women are up in one corner and the

01:55:06.180 men are all down in the other corner and there's no overlap. And the difference between the men

01:55:12.440 and the women is larger than the variation among the men and the women. And what this graph is

01:55:18.540 showing very clearly is that whatever is going on in the man's brain at rest is different from 0.66

01:55:26.560 what's going on in a woman's brain at rest. There were 1,500 individuals. Now, in a survey conducted

01:55:35.540 earlier this year, more than 3% of American high school kids said that they were trans. Well, 0.76

01:55:42.100 3% of 1,500 would be 45. We ought to find 45 people in the middle or crossing over, but we found

01:55:56.900 zero. Zero. And more from this study. Okay. So the researchers found-

01:56:06.800 So what does that tell us? What does that tell us?

01:56:09.760 It is telling us that these kids are confused. An XY male, that child in that video we just saw 0.77

01:56:22.840 is an XY male. Every cell in that individual's body is XY male. They may take female hormones, 0.81

01:56:30.260 they may be castrated, but they are still an XY male. And in my book, Why Gender Matters, 0.98

01:56:39.860 I show that boys see differently, they hear differently, they smell differently 0.99

01:56:44.660 than girls do. And that will not change. Now, that doesn't mean that all boys are one way and 1.00

01:56:52.140 all girls are another way. There's great variation among boys and there's great variation among

01:56:56.740 girls. And we should celebrate and acknowledge those variations. But male and female are

01:57:03.640 biological realities. They are not social constructs. And pretending that that is not so

01:57:12.660 and castrating boys and giving them female hormones 0.96

01:57:17.840 is not going to be in that boy's best interest. 0.95

01:57:22.660 That is what this research is showing us.

01:57:27.640 Possibly there may be rare exceptions.

01:57:30.140 We can debate that case.

01:57:32.560 But the comprehensive review coming out of the United Kingdom

01:57:37.820 by Dr. Kass and her colleagues strongly suggests

01:57:41.860 that in the great majority of cases,

01:57:46.180 in the great majority of cases,

01:57:47.840 pre-pubertal kids should not should not be transitioning to the other sex but i want to

01:57:58.320 finish that sanford study because they also found with these very high resolution functional mri scans

01:58:06.120 and the sophisticated analysis that they were doing they found that they could analyze the

01:58:13.460 brains of the men and they could predict with high accuracy cognitive function including

01:58:18.480 intelligence um for the men but those uh rules that they come in came up with to predict

01:58:25.560 intelligence in men were of zero value in predicting intelligence in women conversely

01:58:31.180 they came up with rules that could predict with high uh accuracy cognitive function including

01:58:36.780 intelligence in women but those rules that predicted intelligence in women were of zero

01:58:41.600 value in predicting intelligence in men. These findings tell us that whatever it is that

01:58:47.600 determines intelligence in the brain of a man does not predict intelligence in brains of women. 0.56

01:58:56.200 Whatever it is that determines intelligence in the brain of a woman does not predict intelligence

01:59:02.060 in the brain of a man. Now, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, if you subscribe to the

01:59:07.040 New York Times. If you listen to every program on national public radio, you heard no mention

01:59:12.940 of this study conducted by the Stanford Medical School and published in one of our most prestigious

01:59:18.860 scholarly journals. If you subscribe to my free newsletter, you would have heard about it. But

01:59:24.060 our mainstream media, our mainstream media never mentioned it. So go to my website,

01:59:30.960 I do find it interesting how these parents, these parents lean in. And in that clip for the

01:59:36.400 listening audience, the young boy posing as a girl is listening to the mother who's crying over

01:59:43.300 the child's potential loss of access to these pills. And the child reaches up to comfort the

01:59:51.080 mother. The child touches the mother from down below, which is a reversal of the way this is a

01:59:56.720 10-year-old kid. It's supposed to be. And all I can think of is this meme. Charlie Kirk sent it

02:00:03.180 out. I'm sure he may not have been the first, but it was, if you're, if your child, if you think

02:00:08.540 you're trans, you have a mental illness. If your child thinks he or she is trans, 0.98

02:00:16.080 it's the mother who has the mental illness. It's the parents who have like, and I cannot help but 0.99

02:00:21.500 notice over and over and over again, you see parents who are weirdly almost needy of this

02:00:29.340 thing like they won't you write about this in the book they won't say that they're having a boy

02:00:35.840 when the ultrasound shows the kid has x y chromosomes you know the baby they're gonna

02:00:41.220 wait for the kid to tell them what they are and then that leads me to one other video i wanted

02:00:46.200 to show you because we showed it on the show or we were we haven't yet but it's disturbing

02:00:49.380 i can't remember whether we did or not frankly but anyway it's a dad and i normally wouldn't i

02:00:54.400 I don't bring parents and children onto the show

02:00:58.680 or show their videos ever

02:01:00.560 if they haven't put something out intentionally.

02:01:03.480 If they want us to be talking about it,

02:01:05.600 then I think it's fair game.

02:01:06.760 And that's what this dad wants.

02:01:08.360 He's in the UK.

02:01:10.360 His name is Jonathan Jolie, J-O-L-Y.

02:01:13.080 And he has a boy who he's now raising as a girl named Edie.

02:01:18.420 They have almost 4 million followers on TikTok.

02:01:22.180 and all this dad does is update us with his boy looking more and more like a girl at a very young

02:01:29.920 age and it's a very almost sexualized looking exchange and what they're doing to quote edie

02:01:37.120 is very reminiscent to me of what like john benet ramsey looked like a sexualized child

02:01:43.460 with the hair and the makeup but i'm not an expert let me show you what i'm talking about

02:01:48.420 Hey guys, so Edie wants to do a summer holiday morning routine and get ready with me and

02:01:58.940 show you guys what her skin care is and her room is and how she picks her outfit and all 0.99

02:02:04.660 that. Cool. So that is the skin care element of the video complete. What's next, Edie?

02:02:12.020 I think I'm going to do my hair next. How do you get your hair so wonderful?

02:02:17.500 Maybe not in the morning because it doesn't look that wonderful.

02:02:23.160 And there are other videos of the parents putting a lot of makeup on Edie,

02:02:28.700 very sort of sexy makeup, heavy eyeliner, wet lip gloss.

02:02:33.380 I find it very disturbing, Doc.

02:02:35.320 What do you make of this?

02:02:36.580 Okay, that's just creepy.

02:02:40.140 That's really creepy.

02:02:41.280 And that's extremely creepy.

02:02:44.300 um and you know we could uh speculate regarding that father's psychopathology and why he is doing

02:02:54.180 that um and i don't want to speculate uh but uh i think we need to focus on the child you made

02:03:03.200 reference to the new chapter in the new edition of the collapse of parenting i was talking with

02:03:08.780 a parent in Orange County, California, and she'd been trying to get pregnant for three years. And

02:03:15.000 she and her husband finally did get pregnant. She was very excited. She was telling everyone at the

02:03:19.620 school, including people she barely knew. And she told a fellow teacher at the school, she said,

02:03:24.580 guess what? We're having a boy. And her colleague said, don't you think you should let the baby

02:03:30.300 decide? And that is indeed a thing that her colleague reprimanded her, that the colleague

02:03:36.280 thought you should wait and and not assign not assign a sex because there are indeed many

02:03:43.460 Americans now who think that sex is assigned at birth and you should wait until the child is three

02:03:49.680 or four years of age and then let the child decide give the child a gender neutral name at

02:03:55.400 birth and then that the that the child choose and if the child was assigned male at birth but they

02:04:02.280 decide that they are female then you should raise the child as a girl which leads them the road to

02:04:09.120 castration and opposite sex hormones etc and i felt this is this was necessary to introduce a

02:04:16.360 new chapter that wasn't in the original version 10 years ago the new chapter titled babies because

02:04:21.320 this is really harmful and it is psychotic it is utterly detached from reality and sex is not

02:04:27.520 assigned at birth, sex is recognized at birth, because indeed, you are born male or female.

02:04:35.940 And those differences that the Stanford University group recognized in adults are present in the

02:04:41.940 baby prior to birth. We have other studies of women in the third trimester, where they've done

02:04:48.240 high-resolution MRI scans of the baby still in its mother's womb, and they find the same differences

02:04:53.420 in the cognitivity of the male brain compared with the female brain.

02:04:58.060 Because Genesis 127, in the image of God, he created him male and female.

02:05:04.320 He created them.

02:05:05.600 It doesn't say black and white he created them.

02:05:07.780 It doesn't say Asian and Hispanic he created them.

02:05:11.420 Black, white, Asian, and Hispanic are indeed man-made categories.

02:05:15.180 But male and female are of God.

02:05:17.200 You are, in fact, born male or female.

02:05:20.340 There is a rare category called intersex, about 2 in 10,000 individuals are indeed born, both male and female.

02:05:28.220 That's a rare pathology on the same order of magnitude as Siamese twins.

02:05:34.800 But for 99.98% of individuals, you are either male or female, and that's the way we are born and made.

02:05:44.000 hopefully the u.s supreme court will see it that way as well and will issue a sensible ruling

02:05:51.300 from what we saw i predict they will dr sex so great talking to you love love love when you come

02:05:57.660 on please come back soon thanks again for inviting me and don't forget the name of the book is the

02:06:03.520 collapse of parenting the revised edition you can get it right now and do so don't let it sell out

02:06:10.700 from all the listeners who are now rushing to read more

02:06:13.400 about Dr. Sachs' longitudinal cohort studies

02:06:17.940 that separate fact from fiction and feelings.

02:06:22.700 And this is an area that's sorely in need of that.

02:06:24.940 I hope it was helpful to you.

02:06:26.520 It certainly was to me.

02:06:30.520 Last summer, the coolest place in the house was in your freezer.

02:06:34.220 This year, it's time to level up.

02:06:36.460 Reliance Home Comfort has over 155,000 five-star reviews,

02:06:40.700 for delivering the type of outstanding customer experience Canadians have counted on for over 60 years.

02:06:46.620 Right now, don't pay for 12 months on a featured air conditioner or heat pump.

02:06:50.980 Call in the experts that know how to beat the heat.

02:06:53.200 Call our reliance.

02:06:55.340 Conditions apply. See website for details.

02:06:58.340 The Heart and Stroke Lottery is back with incredible 1-2 odds of winning.

02:07:02.680 Make your biggest dreams come true with the ultimate grand prize.

02:07:05.840 $1 million cash, plus prizes like luxury SUVs, unforgettable vacations, and more.

02:07:12.000 Your next win may be closer than you think.

02:07:14.460 Buy tickets today at hardenedstrokelottery.ca to play for the loyalty bonus prize, $50,000 cash.

02:07:20.780 Hurry, the loyalty deadline is May 1st.

02:07:23.340 Lottery license RAF 1527913 must be 18+.

02:07:26.820 Please play responsibly.

02:07:29.620 My guests today were searching for self-improvement and a way to contribute to the good of society.

02:07:35.840 when they joined an organization called NXIVM.

02:07:39.360 They found each other and got married,

02:07:41.440 but they also found utter darkness and depravity

02:07:45.940 in one man's desire for ultimate power and control over women.

02:07:53.180 Sarah Edmondson and her husband, Anthony Nippy Ames,

02:07:57.300 are former members now of the cult called NXIVM

02:07:59.840 and the hosts of the podcast, A Little Bit Culty,

02:08:03.800 and they join me now.

02:08:05.840 it's so nice to meet you sarah thank you for being here you as well nippy thank you so much

02:08:14.260 for having us and thank you also for being such a proponent of uh anti-nexium from the beginning

02:08:19.340 we appreciate that of course i remember so clearly where i was when that new york times article hit

02:08:27.000 featuring you uh and a lengthy article about you coming forward about what you'd been through and

02:08:33.140 I had chills. I just couldn't believe it. You were so beautiful. You were accomplished.

02:08:40.180 You were so raw about how you'd been sucked into this thing. And not for nothing, but it happened

02:08:46.340 in my hometown of Albany, New York, which was just so strange to me. Like Albany, you don't

02:08:51.800 think of Albany as like, yeah, I don't know. It doesn't feel culty, right? To use your word.

02:08:57.080 It's like hardworking people. It's kind of like the Midwest. You know, I would think something

02:09:00.900 like this would happen more in California, but it happened in Albany and you were in it too,

02:09:07.100 Nippy. And I know, you know, on the bright side, it brought you together, but not without a hell

02:09:11.240 of a lot of trauma. So thank you for telling the story. I guess let's start at the beginning for

02:09:16.920 the audience members who've never heard of, you know, this, or at least if they've heard of it,

02:09:20.460 they don't really know what it is because I do think much like some other cults, many other

02:09:24.360 cults. It had some pluses, which is why smart, vibrant people like you got drawn in. So talk

02:09:33.080 about how you first heard about it and what was attractive about it to you.

02:09:38.240 Sure. It was 2005. I was an aspiring actress and I was looking for more meaning and purpose

02:09:45.000 community in my life. I met a really talented filmmaker who I admired. I'd just seen his film,

02:09:51.300 What the bleep do we know? And the long and short of it is he said, well, if you like my film,

02:09:55.800 then you'll probably like this course I just took. And as somebody who is into self-improvement and

02:10:00.960 workshops, my parents are both in the therapy field. It seemed like a no-brainer. I did not

02:10:06.080 do any research, unfortunately. I've learned from that mistake now, but I jumped in. I really wanted

02:10:11.660 to develop myself and work through limiting beliefs. And that was the beginning. And it was

02:10:17.340 wonderful at first. Yeah. How about you, Nippy?

02:10:23.040 My story is less glamorous. I had an old high school girlfriend who I went to boarding school

02:10:27.760 with and she's from the area and she had taken the training and I had run into her in New York

02:10:33.460 and she kind of hounded me for about a year and a half. So I kind of went kicking and screaming

02:10:38.020 to the training in part because of what she was saying and in part because she knew me when we

02:10:45.300 dated. She knew I was into the leadership stuff and all that stuff. And it was aligned with me

02:10:49.840 and my principles. And finally, after kind of being hounded about it, I said, fine, I'll do

02:10:55.400 your cult. So I called it a cult from the get, jokingly. You did. Did you have any hint or

02:11:01.760 that was just purely a joke? It was purely a joke. Well, it sounded like a cult and I didn't

02:11:06.720 really have a strong understanding of what a cult is. It just sounded weird and it sounded

02:11:11.380 like you're following this guy. And I was like, yeah, I'll do your cult. And I kind of jokingly

02:11:14.640 went up and did it. And it didn't seem, I mean, it was weird. I mean, it was, it was the whole

02:11:18.800 time. But I kind of took it, you know, in stride and was like, well, you know, what's the worst

02:11:23.980 thing that could happen? Well, cut to. Right. Right. It's, it is true. This is kind of the

02:11:30.700 study in, in how, how people can be manipulated, you know, how very bright, intelligent, accomplished

02:11:38.620 people can be manipulated beyond what they ever thought possible, manipulated into doing things

02:11:45.740 like self-harm against their better instincts and so on. It's like they, they separate you from

02:11:52.280 yourself. They don't, they not only separate you from your family and your friends, they separate

02:11:56.720 you from yourself, which is really one of the, probably the worst things that they can do. But

02:12:02.660 all right, again, I'm getting ahead of myself because before we get to that chapter, there's

02:12:06.960 the wonderful chapter. I talked to Catherine Oxenberg about this, princess and famed Hollywood

02:12:14.580 actress. And she was saying the reason she got into it with her daughter, India, was they were

02:12:20.900 just looking for female empowerment and to do better in business. They were both aspiring

02:12:25.900 businesswomen, and they offered a lot of classes along these lines. So it's kind of, where do you

02:12:30.780 go, right? Where do you go for female improvement or better business acumen if you're not going to 1.00

02:12:35.040 take a full MBA program, Sarah, right? I mean, was there any of that sold to you? 1.00

02:12:40.680 Oh, absolutely. In fact, they even sold it as a more practical and useful MBA. That's what I

02:12:46.500 thought I was getting. And I remember when Catherine and India came and did the program,

02:12:51.200 I'm so happy because I loved them both and wonderful, bright, beautiful energy. And that

02:12:55.800 was such a big part of it as well. It wasn't just learn how to do business, learn what success is

02:13:01.240 from the inside out, how to map out your goals and work through things that you're, you know,

02:13:05.000 you're limiting blocks, your beliefs about yourself and the world, but also as a community

02:13:08.740 of like-minded people and people who were going to achieve big things and wanted to do it with

02:13:14.040 people that were in a similar mindset and do it together. So I have very fond memories

02:13:21.000 of that time period. Right. It always starts well. That's why people stay. So explain what

02:13:28.560 happened with the money? Because I think this story is very telling. And I am also attracted

02:13:34.560 by this woman's message. Like I can already see why you were like, oh, okay. Because you tried to

02:13:39.760 complain or object a little to the expense of it when you were first being recruited

02:13:45.900 and they had an answer for everything. Oh, yes. I was recruited by the best.

02:13:53.660 I actually put a deposit down because I wanted to take advantage of the 48 hour discount,

02:13:58.300 which is a red flag I've warned people about with sales, pressure tactics. I didn't know that at the

02:14:03.780 time. And then I tried to get my money back because I was an actress living in a basement

02:14:09.260 suite. I didn't have $2,000 to pay for a five-day training. And they said, well, you're in your

02:14:14.140 20s and you don't have $2,000? What's up with that? And basically was questioning why I didn't

02:14:21.340 have money, why I had money issues and wanted to know if I was ready to change that. And do I want

02:14:25.780 to be the master of my own ship of course i did and then you said something like well what if i'm

02:14:30.060 in there and my agent calls with a role for me yes well i'm in this training and they had an

02:14:34.820 instant answer for that too yeah you'd be waiting by your phone the whole your whole life or you

02:14:39.700 want to create your own create your own life be the master of your own destiny the captain of

02:14:44.540 your ship or something like that your first experience with gas that's my yeah my first

02:14:47.860 experience of gaslighting did not know what that was and high high sales pressure tactics but i

02:14:54.140 Where your instincts are telling you one thing and they're trying to tell you you're basically 0.99

02:14:59.380 a fool not to listen to your instincts. Those are the things that are holding you back. 0.97

02:15:04.920 Exactly. And what you said earlier about separating you from yourself, that was the

02:15:08.340 beginning. That was the beginning right there when my internal gut was saying,

02:15:12.800 something's not right here. But I also have the belief, and this was fortified further on in the

02:15:18.060 curriculum, that when you're uncomfortable, it's something to look at. It's a, you know,

02:15:22.840 you're hitting up against the limitation, no pain, no gain, which is true, but that doesn't

02:15:27.360 give any room for gut instinct. And when you're separated from yourself and separated from your

02:15:31.800 moral compass, that's when things can go awry. And that was a very slow process. That was

02:15:37.840 from day one, dripped out until 12 years later. This is why it's so important to keep away from

02:15:47.340 these people to begin with. The secret is almost just don't get near them because they're so

02:15:52.760 effective and we're all vulnerable to messages like this. Same, honestly, weirdly when it comes

02:15:59.660 to news, like I, I'm very careful about my news sources because before you know it, I mean, you

02:16:07.020 can be a little crazy if you take in too many news sources from the wrong people, it can really

02:16:14.100 drive you a little nuts. So the whole answer to it is the, the screening upfront before you would

02:16:21.320 let people access your brain and your heart great advice yeah i would i would add you know all these

02:16:29.180 things are case by case and people are susceptible in different ways and the predators like keith

02:16:34.560 ranieri who are very good at it are very good at spotting that and they're proactive in doing it

02:16:40.260 what they have going for them a lot of the times is they know what it's like to be you with your

02:16:45.180 vulnerabilities and they know how to spot them and exploit them um people who are more susceptible

02:16:50.400 they can probably spot they spend more time with and with people like keith you know for me i wasn't

02:16:55.200 targeted in the same way he was targeting women so i was more peripheral to some of his abuse but

02:17:01.380 the people that were susceptible to what he was looking for the people that he spent more time

02:17:05.280 with and he was you know if you could turn pro in abusing people he was a professional at doing it

02:17:10.380 and that's ultimately what came out you know when when everything came out about what he was doing

02:17:15.280 and how he was doing well people talk so much about how he was this gifted brilliant man and

02:17:21.500 it's true that in this one lane he was quite gifted yes not the lane yeah look at him now

02:17:27.940 i mean this is like this looks like somebody who's trying to be a cult leader he's got the

02:17:32.180 jesus hair the beard you know it's like in retrospect you're like oh yeah of course

02:17:37.840 yeah that that picture doesn't do him any justice yeah no he did get a makeover by the way and i

02:17:43.720 want to say 2010 or 11 where he was a little more clean cut and would wear like polo shirts and nice

02:17:48.460 jeans and yeah because the people around him are like you got to clean up a bit because you're

02:17:52.940 not but he would spend that you know he would spend that in the same way that say you know

02:17:57.400 einstein was quirky and he didn't care about that stuff you know that's keith he's just keith he's

02:18:02.260 being him he doesn't put value on material things and he's spiritual he's himself and all that stuff

02:18:08.000 but it's a total affectation yeah yeah it's so you guys are you you've you've talked on your

02:18:13.780 podcast about the steps to realize you're in a cult or getting recruited by a cult and people

02:18:20.660 do need to be aware there are tons of cults it is not just this one they're all over the united

02:18:25.240 states and you get usually you get roped in the way you two did unknowingly so one of the first

02:18:32.620 red flags is what we just talked about, which is a lot of money. They want you to pay and it tends

02:18:39.700 to be escalatory, like a pyramid scheme, like more and more and more for the next level.

02:18:45.980 Because ideally what they want you to feel at the end of the five day is it was super valuable,

02:18:50.640 but also there's something in you that needs to be fixed. And of course they're providing the

02:18:54.460 answers to fix you. And that's the only way, or that's another red flag. This is the path forward.

02:19:00.360 This is the way to evolve whatever it was that you've just realized about yourself is broken.

02:19:06.220 And that's, by the way, like very commonplace.

02:19:09.160 NXIVM is, I don't know if you are afraid of Scientology or not.

02:19:13.600 We're not anymore.

02:19:14.600 But Scientology, Landmark, like all of these programs are all based on the same premise.

02:19:21.500 You know, if you want to transform your life, you have to pay money.

02:19:26.000 You have to pay to play.

02:19:26.820 And this is the path.

02:19:27.940 And to justify the buy-in too.

02:19:29.640 you know you're there working for five days you want to make sure that you feel that your investment

02:19:34.800 was worth it and so they'll say stuff like well was having that awareness about yourself worth

02:19:39.480 the price of admission and you're kind of going well maybe i could have gotten that from a book

02:19:43.340 but i did spend two grand to be here so you have confirmation bias yeah so so here's a question

02:19:49.500 for you now in retrospect knowing what you know do you feel like take keith out of it do you feel

02:19:56.040 like the emissaries around keith were all along like knowingly pushing a pyramid scheme or whether

02:20:04.500 everyone was brainwashed by this guy you know was i believe he was at the top actively manipulating

02:20:12.140 but how about everybody around allow me to feel that one if he loves answering this question so

02:20:16.440 here's my delineation and you can take it for what it's worth um i think there's a lot of people

02:20:22.260 there, I'd say 98% of them, 99% of them who were there because we thought we were doing something

02:20:27.820 good. And the closer to Keith Raniere you got, the more abuse you experienced. And in cases of

02:20:36.740 the worst case scenarios, he was sexually abusing them and they didn't think they were doing it,

02:20:40.880 being sexually abused. They thought they were going on a spiritual path with someone sexually.

02:20:44.740 so um and they were told to keep that secret so 99 of the people stayed in the organization

02:20:52.460 based on the capacity of the people around him to lie and we underestimated the people around

02:20:58.240 him their capacity to lie to us and keep us loyal to someone that they knew who wasn't

02:21:03.880 they knew he wasn't who they were pretending he was meaning he presented himself as celibate he

02:21:09.700 presented himself as these things and the people around him knew that he wasn't that and they were

02:21:13.760 propagating the lie and they were propagating the lie because if they didn't believe in the lie

02:21:18.060 they had to admit to themselves they were being abused so the buy-in for them was my entire life

02:21:25.000 is a fraud and i'm and i'm propagating this myth uh knowingly but if i let other people know that

02:21:33.640 means i have to admit i'm abused so it's like knowing and not knowing so time right but a lot

02:21:39.140 of people made major life decisions based on their capacity to lie because if I had known that's what

02:21:43.880 he was doing and I found out afterwards that some of my friends that you know someone I knew was

02:21:48.460 sexually abused by him and all that if I hadn't known that stuff when I had first done it I'd

02:21:52.940 have been in there raising hell from the get but because I didn't know that stuff and I was

02:21:57.440 peripheral I didn't think this stuff was going on because I didn't think the people that I knew and

02:22:01.540 were friends with were being abused because I thought they would have said something so

02:22:05.420 So, you know, and I didn't know what I was looking at.

02:22:07.900 So, and I would have protected them.

02:22:09.700 I would have been the first one in there.

02:22:11.380 And I think they knew that.

02:22:12.680 So I think that that's why they didn't want to tell me that.

02:22:14.840 So there's a lot of things keeping this thing propped up.

02:22:18.900 And once the truth came out, you know, everything fell apart.

02:22:22.120 And so that's my delineation.

02:22:24.400 Like, it's hard for me to, I never knowingly lied about Keith Raniere and who he was.

02:22:31.500 I was unwittingly aligned with someone abusing people.

02:22:34.820 And that was, you know, I had to go fix that, you know, and Sarah and I, you know, have done everything we can to fix that.

02:22:40.420 But the people that were close to him have to reconcile being abused by him and then lying about who he was to keep people loyal to him.

02:22:47.780 Can I tell you guys something?

02:22:48.960 It's kind of a double whammy.

02:22:50.140 Yeah.

02:22:50.520 I've said this before.

02:22:51.740 In fact, whenever I talk about NXIVM, this comes up for me because in many ways it reminds me of Fox News, my time at Fox News.

02:23:00.540 When Roger Ailes was running it.

02:23:02.620 Yeah. He was like a cult leader. And Fox News, when I was there, was in many ways like a cult.

02:23:10.960 It was definitely, quote, culty. He was the leader whose judgment was not to be questioned.

02:23:16.160 You were to defend him at all costs and not question his genius. Anybody who left was

02:23:22.600 otherized and demonized immediately. You know, even just a correspondent who like got fired,

02:23:28.020 you know, didn't want to go. Doesn't matter. You're on the outs. It's us versus them.

02:23:32.620 And I, as I got higher in the organization, you know, closer to the sun and got to know him better

02:23:41.660 and better, all I could think of was that Carly Simon song. Sometimes I wish, often I wish that

02:23:49.380 I never knew all those secrets of yours. I, I, I was getting exposed to the reality and I had a

02:23:59.000 real wrestling session with myself on an ongoing basis about who is he who is this man you know

02:24:05.460 is he this all-knowing television genius or is he this frail conspiratorial paranoid guy who's a

02:24:14.300 genius at messaging and i've been sucked into it to be a cog in this massive wheel and honestly i

02:24:22.220 don't i don't know if i have a clear answer on that even right now but i totally get what you

02:24:26.940 went through. Well, the questions you're asking are valuable. And that's why our podcast is called

02:24:33.780 A Little Bit Culty because the abuses of power that went on in cults or go on in cults aren't

02:24:39.780 proprietary to cults. They go on a lot of places and putting language to it and shining a light on

02:24:44.780 it is kind of in our lane. And the fact that you can make those connections is great. I think

02:24:50.400 valuable for a lot of people. Absolutely. And it's so important right now because I think

02:24:54.780 even if you use the word cult people get a little defensive and they go it's not a cult

02:24:58.540 traditionally doesn't have all of the markers but another way of saying it is is this a healthy

02:25:04.560 place for me to be I remember when when you were dealing with that publicly I got goosebumps just

02:25:09.840 now as you were talking that I started to make those correlations without obviously knowing

02:25:14.780 everything that you just said but anytime that there's someone who you can't question without

02:25:20.220 getting in trouble. And there's this air of fear in a workplace environment. You don't have to

02:25:25.900 call it a cult. It's just not good for you. You can't express your true opinions. You don't want

02:25:31.080 to say what's really on your mind. And like you said, you're separated from yourself because you

02:25:35.780 want to keep your job. That's not healthy. Nevermind healthy, whatever. Does that make sense?

02:25:41.440 And at Fox, similar to NXIVM, it came out in the whole Me Too scandal that he had this secret floor

02:25:50.060 at Fox with these private detectives and others who would be digging up dirt on his enemies,

02:25:57.460 anybody who turned on him. It was a very risky thing to do to challenge him in any way,

02:26:02.560 which is why, you know, his Me Too scandal went on for so long without anybody speaking up about

02:26:07.460 it. I mean, people understood you didn't cross him. And these leaders, they have that ability

02:26:12.540 of scaring you through their emissaries, through their messaging, you know, they have ways of

02:26:18.940 letting you know that you'll pay if you cross them or the group and it's amazing how again

02:26:26.000 you can be pulled into this even even though you don't think you're one of them at nexium

02:26:31.860 it was a step further where you guys actually called him vanguard you know he had like the

02:26:38.320 the name was that at first did that feel silly were you like what oh god at first and at last

02:26:45.900 Megan the whole time it was it was that you know it was but also it became normalized like

02:26:52.040 you know people would say vanguard means it's the leader of a philosophical movement and that's what

02:26:57.540 he's done so you know you call him vanguard some people called him v uh out of school or i know

02:27:04.000 out of the center we called him keith um but it it just became normal like all the things that

02:27:10.460 were weird at first the sashes the bowing and that was introduced on day one as these are the things

02:27:16.500 we do as in you know if you go to someone's house and they take off their shoes you take off your

02:27:20.800 shoes because that's the polite thing to do so you go to their center you wear the sash you call

02:27:24.900 them vanguard you kind of just like i'm just doing it because you're asking me to and i'm taking off

02:27:29.500 my shoes and then it becomes courtesy yeah it's a courtesy yeah and then it's a dojo so this is

02:27:35.900 like a martial arts system. We wear these sashes. It denotes what level of rank you are, just like

02:27:41.860 in a dojo. You don't want to wear one? Well, let's look at that. But what area in your life do you

02:27:46.460 feel like you might have an issue with authority? And then again, you don't know that you're being

02:27:51.540 gaslit because they're saying it nicely. They're there to help you with your authority issues,

02:27:55.300 which by the way, some of us may also have. So there's like truth mixed in with the gaslighting

02:28:01.940 and then you're questioning yourself and you're like, whatever, it's a piece of fabric. I'm just

02:28:05.060 going to wear the stupid sash and it was done effectively i mean lauren salzman was was a really 0.98

02:28:09.380 good head trainer and she would teach it in a way to to normalize it pretty quickly um she's like 0.99

02:28:14.940 she was the daughter of the one of the co-founders nancy salzman and would go on to become sarah's

02:28:19.840 best friend keep going yes and she would do it in a way it's like look we do these things at work

02:28:25.740 we do these things you know we we have titles like your honor and justice systems and so she

02:28:30.880 was drawing parallels and the curriculum drew parallels in society of like where you could go

02:28:35.980 as a student okay i'll wear it for this training right and so slowly you're starting to become

02:28:43.420 acclimated and indoctrinated into a culture that you haven't seen anything bad about yet you just

02:28:48.960 think it's weird and some people would be okay with it i was never really comfortable with it

02:28:55.640 but we always i mean for the most part we all thought it was weird and all of us were like

02:28:59.240 look, we got to lose the sashes. We're losing students. So it was kind of like one of those

02:29:03.880 things where we all knew the optics of it. Hey, at Fox News, it was polyester bright colored

02:29:08.900 dresses. Everyone has their uniform. There you go. Could have been worse.

02:29:15.620 I was going to say, which is worse? They said all these wonderful things about Keith. He's this,

02:29:20.340 he's that, the other thing. And I remember talking to Catherine Oxenberg about when she

02:29:23.820 got her first look at him. And of course, she comes from Hollywood. She's like, you know,

02:29:28.080 She knows what an attractive person looks like, you know, in a way Californians know acutely.

02:29:34.060 And I remember her being like, she was like, that's it?

02:29:37.740 That's him?

02:29:39.020 Did you, like, that's Vanguard?

02:29:40.980 Did you have a moment like that when you first got eyes on him?

02:29:43.560 Oh, yeah.

02:29:44.700 Yeah.

02:29:45.200 Yeah.

02:29:45.740 I mean, he just looked like a schlubby, you know, volleyball playing.

02:29:51.480 I think he actually had knee pads on when I first met him.

02:29:53.780 I'll take it to him.

02:29:54.860 Schlubby.

02:29:55.500 I mean, look, I played sports my whole life.

02:29:57.920 I was a college athlete and they were trying to sell this guy as an athlete.

02:30:01.100 And I went and showed up to one of the volleyball things.

02:30:03.540 You know, my friend took me one night and I was, it was late and I was kicking and screaming

02:30:07.820 going to that because in my mind, I was going to take a training and peace out.

02:30:11.700 And I saw him moving around.

02:30:13.340 I was like, do you guys really think this guy's an athlete?

02:30:15.880 Like, look at him.

02:30:17.300 Like, and they were like all marveling at how he played volleyball.

02:30:20.120 And I'm over there just kind of going, oh my God, like what is going on here?

02:30:24.940 Wait, stand by.

02:30:25.760 Cause we have, we have a little video of this.

02:30:27.200 I'll show the audience and pick it back up

02:30:29.380 don't take my word

02:30:31.620 we can practice

02:30:34.940 generating an extreme

02:30:37.600 feeling of joy over

02:30:39.420 anything

02:30:40.060 our methods that we have especially in 2C

02:30:43.360 it's one of our intents

02:30:46.320 thank you

02:30:47.300 do I hug and I kiss

02:30:50.000 good voice

02:30:54.720 thank you

02:30:55.380 me too

02:30:57.200 oh my gosh

02:30:59.020 not a strong

02:31:01.480 selling point

02:31:02.180 I always joke about this

02:31:05.560 and I always gave

02:31:07.080 the person that enrolled me 0.88

02:31:09.600 a lot of crap for this because I was like 0.94

02:31:11.200 why is he putting the fact that he's a judo champion 0.98

02:31:13.260 in 6th grade on his resume

02:31:15.040 why is that a selling point

02:31:16.480 there's a lot of things that I did in 6th grade

02:31:19.500 that were as successful that I've forgotten about

02:31:21.880 he's a judo champion

02:31:24.460 get over it

02:31:25.880 Why didn't he continue?

02:31:26.800 Why didn't he go into, like, you know, mixed martial arts in his 20s?

02:31:29.400 That would be more impressive.

02:31:30.620 But the sixth grade achievements on his resume.

02:31:32.940 I was runner-up for class president in the fifth grade.

02:31:36.020 I lost to a kid who ran into George Brown.

02:31:37.260 I'm really proud of you, Megan.

02:31:38.680 Thank you.

02:31:39.240 Thank you.

02:31:39.440 I feel really good about it.

02:31:46.280 When all was said and done, I don't think – he hadn't yet been tried.

02:31:50.340 So it wasn't all said and done.

02:31:51.900 But after we get to, you know, and we'll get to this, but he got arrested.

02:31:55.880 I had an interview with his lawyer, Mark Agnifolo.

02:31:58.920 It was contentious.

02:31:59.760 Yes, we saw that.

02:32:00.880 I forgot about that.

02:32:01.480 Yes.

02:32:02.440 Remember that?

02:32:03.080 Can we cuss?

02:32:03.680 And I don't think he was.

02:32:05.080 Is it okay to curse on here?

02:32:06.480 Yeah, you can curse.

02:32:07.640 BS. 1.00

02:32:08.480 That was bullshit. 1.00

02:32:10.260 I was pissed after that. 0.99

02:32:11.580 I was so grateful for you, though, for asking the tough questions.

02:32:15.100 Yeah, that was great.

02:32:15.660 You were like, seriously, Mark?

02:32:18.260 He was like, this is New York.

02:32:19.760 We don't do slavery here.

02:32:21.440 What do you mean?

02:32:22.000 We pick ourselves up.

02:32:23.200 We're strong.

02:32:23.980 New Yorkers are.

02:32:24.420 I'm like, okay. 1.00

02:32:25.880 You can be strong and be sexually manipulated, as the women are alleging here.

02:32:30.700 He was like, what do you mean?

02:32:31.500 The New York jury's not going to buy that?

02:32:33.000 Well, okay.

02:32:34.200 So here's a little clip where I got into it with him about what an amazing, accomplished man Keith Raniere supposedly was.

02:32:43.500 Check it out.

02:32:44.640 About Keith Raniere and his tenuous relationship with the truth.

02:32:48.440 He claimed he graduated from high school and started RPI at age 16.

02:32:51.320 That's not true.

02:32:52.100 Yeah, I don't know.

02:32:52.840 I don't know when he started RPI.

02:32:53.540 He claimed he could make full sentences by the age of one.

02:32:57.240 If exaggerating about one's resume is a crime, I think we're all in trouble.

02:33:00.900 No, I'm not.

02:33:02.360 I'm probably not either, but other than the two of us. 1.00

02:33:04.960 This guy is a liar. 0.99

02:33:06.320 He has a long history of lying about himself and his achievements, including his time at RPI, 0.99

02:33:11.820 where he was a 2.2 GPA and not a triple major who set records at the school.

02:33:16.300 That doesn't worry me in the least.

02:33:17.540 No?

02:33:17.880 No.

02:33:19.160 Oh, my God.

02:33:21.180 Well, it should.

02:33:22.460 My hero.

02:33:23.540 My favorite line is, no, I'm not.

02:33:25.400 And he's like, yeah, no, me neither.

02:33:27.180 I know, actually none of us really do that.

02:33:29.300 That was like 19-year-old stuff.

02:33:31.880 Oh, that was so great, Megan.

02:33:33.680 You meet him.

02:33:35.240 He's not the brightest bulb.

02:33:36.860 Even you have, like, we're kind of like, I don't get it.

02:33:39.500 Is this the genius?

02:33:40.440 But okay, you know.

02:33:41.240 But the women around him seem to have been really on, and men too,

02:33:46.040 but like on and kind and warm and offering something.

02:33:49.480 So it wasn't all about him, Sarah.

02:33:51.420 Is that correct?

02:33:52.360 Well, I want to add one caveat here, just because it's important. It's easy to sit back in hindsight and make fun of it and kind of distance ourselves from what we had fallen for. I will say for me personally, I was all in on the curriculum. I was all in what I thought we were doing.

02:34:11.200 so i one of the things that i don't like is when people don't own what they fell for and try to

02:34:18.020 distance themselves from like you know i fell for this and it kind of minimizes the story and and

02:34:23.780 the magnitude of of what can happen you know for me i was somewhat evangelical about like hey this

02:34:29.820 is these are ethics these are changing the world yes i thought keith was was weird but i was i was

02:34:34.380 hook line and sinker bought into what we were doing and not totally sold on Keith, but like

02:34:41.500 didn't think there was bad things going on there in the way that they were. So I think it's important

02:34:45.860 to own that that's, you know, how I got myself in the situation and not minimize the fact that I did

02:34:52.760 fall for this thing. It's easy to laugh at now. So anyway, I just think it's important. I don't

02:34:58.960 want to, I don't want to punch down on people that are in that situation because I do think

02:35:02.900 you have to go take the bite out of that and really lean into it to understand what happened

02:35:07.000 to you so all it's fun and kidding but and then just putting that out there yeah and it's

02:35:13.160 therapeutic to laugh after the fact too it is it is i have plenty of i would not be through this

02:35:18.860 trauma if it wasn't for the way that nippy and i can laugh about it and continue to uh but to

02:35:23.960 answer your question i think for me it's a little different i even though he was a schlub and i

02:35:28.500 wasn't attracted to him, I was greatly respectful of what I thought that he built. I thought his

02:35:34.640 mind created this tech, which is another red flag, by the way, that curriculum, it's not a

02:35:39.840 technology, but we had been so changed by it. And I thought that came from him. And I obviously now

02:35:46.240 know that he stole that from a number of other modalities that already exist and packaged it as

02:35:50.680 his own. But then he was also propped up by these women that seem to have their lives together and

02:35:56.500 people that I really liked and respected. So I was getting so many of my social and emotional

02:36:02.420 and spiritual needs met very, very quickly. Community, meaning, I was helping myself. I was

02:36:09.560 growing, but I got to help others. I got to give people the transformational experience that I was

02:36:14.360 getting, which totally filled my cup. I felt special. I got taken under the wing of women

02:36:20.580 that I really looked up to and they were going to help me grow. And also it was measurable,

02:36:24.920 The stride path, the martial arts system of growth was so different than acting, which

02:36:30.600 is what I've been doing before, which is, you know, you never know if you're going to

02:36:34.320 book work or not book work.

02:36:35.360 And now I knew I could just do boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

02:36:37.740 And I would evolve.

02:36:39.400 Like, that's what a great promise. 0.98

02:36:41.260 I didn't, again, like Nippy said, I underestimated that, you know, how much bullshit that actually 0.99

02:36:47.680 was. 0.98

02:36:48.160 But if it was what it said it was, it would have been amazing.

02:36:51.220 I know.

02:36:51.440 I'm ready to sign up right now.

02:36:52.440 I hear you and I'm like, yeah, I want it all.

02:36:56.700 And so he, you and he interacted quite a bit

02:36:59.020 in the show, The Vow, which was on HBO,

02:37:02.480 which is an excellent documentary about all of this

02:37:04.980 and how he went down.

02:37:06.780 Has the scene of you and Keith, Sarah,

02:37:09.200 you and Keith interacting in,

02:37:11.240 as part of like your training.

02:37:12.740 We've cut a little bit of it

02:37:13.760 just to give the audience a flavor.

02:37:15.380 It's thought too.

02:37:17.280 I keep drawing a blank.

02:37:18.520 That's okay.

02:37:19.140 And I know I'm giving you unbearable grief.

02:37:21.500 It's okay.

02:37:22.440 but if you could do it here you can do it in new york i know i should know this um

02:37:28.280 all right he's ready to have fun yeah all right okay so in order to have fun we don't want anyone

02:37:37.340 to get hurt right no not fun enough who here is here to have fun fun yeah come on fun

02:37:47.000 okay you should be trying to turn up their energy level okay when the audience gives

02:37:54.140 you the signal that they got it you move you move you move

02:37:57.480 this is actually good i mean i'm listening i'm like that's all good advice i think

02:38:04.180 he was teaching um basic rapport skills of how to like lead a group uh in the room but i haven't

02:38:11.700 actually seen that since the vow came out i forgot how painful that was a to watch and b

02:38:15.760 in the moment. And that was actually one of the only times I was ever trained by Keith

02:38:19.740 personally in sales. And all I could think of was how beautiful you are. You're so beautiful. Like

02:38:25.500 your angle, the angles of your face and your, the earnestness of you standing up there,

02:38:29.620 actually trying to learn it. And I see it though, like he's charming and what he's saying to you

02:38:33.740 makes sense of how to relate to a crowd. He's actually trying to improve you. He's trying to

02:38:37.660 improve you, I think, to sell his products and get more buyers into his cult. No.

02:38:41.720 yes but also he was humiliating me i don't remember if you see it in the whole clip but

02:38:47.660 like he pushed me and pushed me and pushed me trying to get me to break down and i refused

02:38:51.800 to cry and at the end he gave me a little crumb and said good job and that's when i remember

02:38:56.740 like looking back that that's how he controlled so many of the women he was always humiliating them

02:39:02.180 subtly under the guise of trying to develop them and then would give them these little crumbs of

02:39:07.380 um attention and affirmation that they were on track and that he didn't really mess with me much

02:39:13.880 mostly because i think i was out in vancouver just bringing new fresh students to him so he

02:39:19.420 didn't do that a lot with me but that was a particular painful moment that i'd actually

02:39:24.960 completely forgot about till i saw the vow and was horrified i also don't think you're susceptible

02:39:29.900 in the same ways i was not susceptible in the same ways well we've since learned through mostly

02:39:37.240 through our podcast and interviewing other, you know, survivors and experts, especially

02:39:41.460 experts on gaslighting and narcissism and cults that a lot of these guys really look

02:39:46.500 for, it's such a, I hate to use the word, but like daddy issues, but like a bad attachment

02:39:52.600 with their father in some case, or bad, not good attachment with the parents.

02:39:57.000 So then Keith would step in and be that father figure to a lot of these women, you know,

02:40:02.640 to grow them, to coach them similar to how he was doing with Alison in that clip.

02:40:06.320 he never reached me in that way uh partly I think because I have a great relationship with my dad

02:40:11.760 and um strong attachment if you believe in those theories with my parents um so I mean he got me

02:40:17.040 in other ways but not that way thank goodness and also you know being with Nippy uh long-term

02:40:24.180 protected me um and which I think also infuriated him knowing what we know now yes yes oh god I can

02:40:31.220 relate to all of this too I was just thinking like when Roger L started to feel like I was

02:40:36.300 getting out from under his thumb and I was not, you know, just going to do whatever he wanted me

02:40:42.460 to do or say whatever he wanted me to say, he started to insult me like a fair amount behind

02:40:47.560 the scenes to try to, you know, cut down my confidence. And I just, I don't know if I'd

02:40:54.100 identified that. I always just sort of attributed it to anger, but it, you're giving me a new way

02:40:59.820 to think of it almost you know like it's it's a manipulation almost like to change you so that

02:41:06.940 you'll go back to the way you were there's a term negging i don't know if you've heard it and it's

02:41:12.800 i don't i don't know the book yeah it's from the game and the idea is as i understand it is i'll

02:41:20.360 give you a little bit of approval so it feels good and then you'll always be chasing that approval

02:41:24.320 and then also you start and so like the person it's it's actually a dating yeah training for

02:41:30.780 men yeah to try to get women like men who can't just like date women normally would learn this

02:41:37.400 way of like yeah it's basically dropping these little breadcrumbs of approval but then also

02:41:41.360 the negging is sort of like an insult these little insults like establish interest and then take it

02:41:46.400 away so that you'll want it more it's why you see sometimes women with these men you're like what is 0.98

02:41:50.760 going on there because they're like giving it's almost like a microcosm of um sex trafficking and

02:41:56.120 grooming it's uh love bombing and then a couple episodes where women have described this valuing

02:42:02.680 you know the cult of one you know we've had some episodes where people um have described this

02:42:08.120 strategy um where men target women find their vulnerabilities and exploit it in that way and

02:42:14.600 And depending on, I'm kind of out of my lane here, but depending on your attachment, say, with a loved one or a previous loved one or something like that, they recognize now that you might be vulnerable to that strategy.

02:42:30.100 And if not, you might be vulnerable to another one.

02:42:32.160 And this is how they operate, and this is how they work, and this is how they filter a room.

02:42:35.400 I think they can walk into a room, according to some interviews we've had, and spot the person just by the way they look, by the care of themselves.

02:42:43.860 because they have such in so much intel and such a body of work on people that they can kind of

02:42:49.680 scan a room and go this person probably is susceptible to this this this and this yeah

02:42:54.920 right and they do find out what your issues were i mean i was more like you sarah where i didn't

02:42:59.140 really have that many i mean i thankfully i come from a great family though my dad died when i was

02:43:03.820 young but a very loving family and i was a strong person but you can still get sucked in it it doesn't

02:43:11.160 just happen to weak people i like it happens to strong weak people with issues people who have

02:43:17.320 almost no issues it's that's one of the things i hope people take away from your story is like

02:43:21.880 absolutely yeah a lot of these women were very strong very smart accomplished and before they

02:43:28.580 knew it you know they were on the table without their clothes on saying it would be my honor if 0.75

02:43:33.900 you would do this thing to me um so let's let's push it forward a little can we just talk one

02:43:39.360 minute about the seagrams heirs because he he had strong and powerful and very wealthy backers

02:43:48.760 too because you know you wonder like nexium wasn't just in albany it was in quite a few places here

02:43:53.920 you're canadian um he branched out quite a bit and he had some important financial backers so

02:44:00.740 can you talk about these this pair of sisters the bronfmans you want to feel that one i mean you

02:44:08.560 can chime in when you as i understand it um because again sarah and i weren't the inner circle

02:44:15.740 right so you have to understand we we we are observing it from the outside but what we've

02:44:20.980 gathered and what court documents have gathered is that i think and this is what we've kind of

02:44:27.040 ascertained is once they came in they became made that they the admitted powers that be made them

02:44:33.180 special and promoted them very quickly and sure as i as i understand it's like getting a bezos or

02:44:39.720 a gates who wants to join your organization and help fund sure they were vips and they were

02:44:46.100 targeted and i think claire from my assessment was a little bit uh susceptible more susceptible 1.00

02:44:52.700 when she was put in a position of authority and power and kind of ushered to the top where she

02:44:57.540 was making decisions but really it was keith making decisions um sarah less so because i think

02:45:02.520 sarah you know wanted other things i worked with sarah a little bit in new york city because we

02:45:07.660 ran the center there for a little bit and i just think she constantly struggled with her commitment

02:45:11.900 to the organization i think she wanted a husband a family and that's ultimately what she ended up

02:45:16.920 doing so she ended up being peripheral ultimately but her sister was so it was claire claire was

02:45:22.540 the one who held on to the bitter end i mean she was like the cops were taking him away she's still

02:45:27.500 like no still till now yeah yeah still now wow she's in jail and she got the maximum sentence

02:45:34.180 for her crimes she got tripled the suggested amount because she refused to disavow keith

02:45:41.360 in court incredible this is i think i said but this is the heir to the seagram's liquor fortune

02:45:48.760 and beverage fortune yeah um okay so you guys were things were kind of rolling along and then

02:45:55.520 something critical happened to you, Sarah, where your best friend, who we mentioned,

02:46:00.480 who was the daughter of the co-founder, Lauren, came to you and wanted you to do something that

02:46:08.340 would make you extra special, like sort of an exclusive thing that she wanted to share with you 0.99

02:46:13.220 as your best friend and in this lane of female empowerment. Can you explain what happened?

02:46:20.000 Sure. And there's a lot of steps that led to this point. And this is often where people

02:46:24.420 stop and go, sorry, what happened? And I need to give a little backstory, which is this is,

02:46:29.460 you know, 12 years into the organization. We've had our first child. I'm starting to pull back.

02:46:34.400 I'm starting to recognize I want other things. And being a mom is more important to me than

02:46:38.500 growing this, this company. And I get invited to a secret sorority. I've never been in a sorority,

02:46:45.300 a secret club for women, by women, badass, sounds so dumb now, badass bitch bootcamp, 0.98

02:46:51.680 We're going to work on ourselves and take the tools to a whole new level, although it's got nothing to do with NXIVM. 0.97

02:46:58.620 And I sign up thinking this is going to take everything I've been working on to the next level.

02:47:05.060 Also, Lauren invited me and I trust her implicitly.

02:47:07.660 She was also, you know, she's our son's godmother, married us at our wedding.

02:47:12.360 So, you know, I say, why not?

02:47:15.300 And it was many, many, many steps that occurred from saying yes to that and then being fully committed to this organization called DOS, which I didn't know what it meant until after the fact.

02:47:31.260 Yeah, I can feel my body.

02:47:33.700 I haven't talked about this in a while.

02:47:34.780 My body started to go into like a little bit of a trauma response.

02:47:38.800 Yeah, I can see it.

02:47:39.660 I'm aware that I have to be careful.

02:47:40.740 But what can I tell you about it?

02:47:43.740 I'm sorry.

02:47:44.440 I, I, I can see it. And I, I know people who have been through like really traumatic things,

02:47:49.440 this can happen. It can have a physical effect just to speak about it. Um, so I can help fill

02:47:56.340 in some of the blanks. Oh, I can see you're getting upset. I'm sorry. I know what you've

02:48:00.140 been through. It's okay. I, I thought it, I thought it was, it's been seven years. I thought

02:48:04.380 I was past it, but it's just been a while to, to revisit it. Well, it's deeply traumatizing

02:48:10.780 because it's this organization

02:48:12.540 to which you've devoted your life,

02:48:14.080 your best friend, a person you trusted,

02:48:17.160 a person you thought loved you

02:48:18.720 who asked you to do this extraordinary thing

02:48:21.780 and manipulated you into doing it.

02:48:25.780 So why don't we run a clip from The Vow,

02:48:30.480 from HBO's The Vows, in which this explains,

02:48:34.460 she came to you with a proposal 0.98

02:48:35.740 that you be her slave, quote, slave. 1.00

02:48:38.700 She would be your master. 0.52

02:48:40.780 And here's a little detail on how that was supposed to work.

02:48:44.480 The heightened level of a coaching relationship. 0.92

02:48:47.840 Which makes sense that she goes into, and we call it master-slave.

02:48:55.380 So what I knew about this point is that Lauren had sisters.

02:48:57.960 She was part of a pod.

02:48:59.800 I knew there were other sisters under Lauren. 1.00

02:49:03.080 She said, one day you'll have slaves.

02:49:07.300 And you'll have six slaves and then you'll be a grandmaster. 0.99

02:49:10.780 I'm like, you know, keep in mind, every step along the way is totally weird, just like sashes are weird. 0.89

02:49:17.280 But then Lauren explains it, and it's like a little less weird.

02:49:24.600 And I think we should tell the audience about collateral before we talk about what happened next, because this was an important piece of the story.

02:49:32.520 Can you explain what collateral meant within NXIVM or within DOS?

02:49:35.780 sure so even before DOS was introduced there was this term called collateral

02:49:40.840 and brilliantly Keith set this up for years before this ever happened I mean think about

02:49:48.440 if I joined in 2005 and they would have told me that 12 years later I would have the leader's

02:49:54.000 initials on my body I probably would have run for the hills but didn't happen that that way

02:49:59.220 And I would say in around 2010, 11 is when collateral got introduced and it was, it was earlier. It was much earlier than this. It was 2017 that I got branded. And collateral was basically a term that, well, it's a term in the English language, but NXIVM, it was something that you'd put down as a commitment against your word. Is that something?

02:50:22.040 yeah like if you were going to do a goal around weight loss or writing a screenplay you'd

02:50:27.840 say if I don't do x y and z I'm putting this 500 down and it's consequence gonna go yeah gonna go

02:50:33.380 to charity or something or I'm gonna donate it to the center or I'm gonna whatever and that was

02:50:38.180 also mixed with penance which I think if anyone's religious I was not religious I didn't understand

02:50:43.200 the term or have any background to it but penance was a part of it as well people were doing penances

02:50:48.020 and putting down collaterals against their word.

02:50:52.000 And in Naxiom, your word, your commitment, your integrity,

02:50:56.640 it was one of the highest values,

02:50:59.240 which may not make sense to the average listener,

02:51:02.540 but there's just certain components of the belief system

02:51:06.620 that was slowly infiltrated into our belief system over time

02:51:09.840 that was of the utmost value.

02:51:12.340 And one of those things was commitment, your word.

02:51:14.980 And so it was very normal to give collateral to back something up.

02:51:20.420 And then it went next level in DOS, as I understand it, where they didn't want you to just give $500.

02:51:28.620 They wanted something much more personal and potentially damaging.

02:51:33.760 Yeah. And every step along the way with DOS, there was more and more collateral.

02:51:38.080 And then once I had finally fully committed, I found out that there was going to be collateral collected every month.

02:51:44.040 So people were giving things like nude photos, like sexual videos, false testimonies, false accusations of like the worst possible thing you could say against your parents that your master would hold so that if you ever defected or left the group that those things would be released, those letters would be released.

02:52:04.520 one person i think that wrote that their parents had molested them um or that uh there was a lawyer

02:52:10.520 involved who said that she had falsified evidence of a trial that would have gotten her disbarred

02:52:14.340 terrible terrible things but these things were meant we were told to keep help you keep your

02:52:20.640 word never to be released otherwise that would be blackmail which is what it was that's the

02:52:26.200 appropriate word i mean speaking of scientology yeah exactly i mean when we just to jump to later

02:52:33.360 deprogramming and watching Going Clear and all the Scientology content, I was just blown away

02:52:38.900 by the similarities there. The collection of all the secrets, which also happened in NXIVM even

02:52:45.040 before DOS was introduced. When you came to do a training, you'd write down on the intake form

02:52:49.540 what your goals were, why you were there. What was your worst moment ever in your life? What was

02:52:53.800 your worst decision? I mean, depending on bad things you may or may not have done in your life,

02:52:58.540 those things in the wrong hands, 100% be blackmail.

02:53:03.560 It would be scary.

02:53:04.940 This is their strategy.

02:53:06.260 Yeah, very scary.

02:53:08.200 So your best friend, Lauren, asks you to engage in this ceremony

02:53:14.260 where you're going to take off your clothes.

02:53:17.840 And first of all, that must have been like, you know, 1.00

02:53:20.000 women will change in front of each other or going out or whatever.

02:53:22.360 Like you don't ask your friend to get naked in front of you. 1.00

02:53:24.340 so was that do you remember having a big reaction to that moment

02:53:28.740 yeah so when she invited me to dos originally what she told me was that i was going to be

02:53:35.100 having a special very special ceremony with my other sisters who hadn't met yet in the sorority

02:53:40.520 you know initiation she didn't say anything about being naked she said we were going to get a 0.88

02:53:44.600 matching tattoo that was really pretty and she showed me the location on her body and told me 1.00

02:53:50.340 it was dime size. That's what she told me on the night of is when she asked me to, to get naked and 0.96

02:53:57.340 put a blindfold on. And it's just like, you know, even, even now to this day, it's, it's difficult

02:54:03.560 talking about it, obviously, but explaining why somebody would say yes to that. And ironically,

02:54:09.460 recently just talking to somebody who was in a fraternity, I heard my story. I was like, oh,

02:54:13.660 I get it. Like when I was in a fraternity, like we're sort of agreeing to like, this is a game

02:54:17.720 And like, you're, you know, you're above me and I'm going to let you paddle me.

02:54:20.420 And like, okay, but it's part of the, you know, we're just in a fraternity.

02:54:22.840 You're not really my master.

02:54:24.040 You're not really, I'm not really your slave.

02:54:25.720 And that's always how I felt about it.

02:54:27.680 So when she asked me to do that, it was kind of like, okay, okay, we're doing this.

02:54:31.600 All right.

02:54:32.320 Like, and I, you know, I knew Lauren well, I had been, you know, I changed in front of

02:54:37.980 her and like laid down naked and like, it's just, it's crazy.

02:54:42.380 It's, I understand how crazy it is. 0.96

02:54:44.640 And, you know, it's it's hard to it's hard to explain 12 years of indoctrination to lead one to this point to understand what could be going on in my psychology that I would say, OK, and not like this is fucking weird.

02:55:00.960 And like call Nippy to come pick me up because he dropped me off to have what he thought was soup and salad girls night or something. 0.73

02:55:07.720 Oh, boy. You guys you guys are married at this point, right?

02:55:10.360 You're married. You have a son at this point, two year old.

02:55:14.360 He was three.

02:55:15.420 Yeah, almost three.

02:55:16.580 He turned three five days after we blew it up.

02:55:19.120 Yes, that's right.

02:55:24.100 Last summer, the coolest place in the house was in your freezer.

02:55:27.800 This year, it's time to level up.

02:55:30.040 Reliance Home Comfort has over 155,000 five-star reviews

02:55:33.960 for delivering the type of outstanding customer experience

02:55:36.980 Canadians have counted on for over 60 years.

02:55:40.180 Right now, don't pay for 12 months on a featured air conditioner or heat pump.

02:55:44.360 Call on the experts that know how to beat the heat.

02:55:48.780 Conditions apply. See website for details.

02:55:51.920 The Heart and Stroke Lottery is back with incredible one to two odds of winning.

02:55:56.260 Make your biggest dreams come true with the ultimate grand prize.

02:55:59.660 One million dollars cash.

02:56:01.280 Plus, prizes like luxury SUVs, unforgettable vacations, and more.

02:56:05.580 Your next win may be closer than you think.

02:56:08.040 Buy tickets today at heartandstrokelottery.ca to play for the loyalty bonus prize.

02:56:12.500 $50,000 cash. Hurry. The loyalty deadline is May 1st. Lottery license RAF 1527913 must be 18 plus.

02:56:20.540 Please play responsibly.

02:56:25.300 So you, I mean, I mean, this is just like you, you know, you did absolutely nothing wrong.

02:56:31.260 What your decisions are completely understandable given the context. And she was the villain here.

02:56:35.560 and so she so now she reveals it's not a tattoo it's a brand and that too was misrepresented

02:56:43.980 like what am i getting branded on me like what and she did not what did she tell you it was

02:56:50.060 she told so at this point i'm with all my sisters so there was four other women and lauren and then

02:56:57.780 the doctor i say that loosely um yeah air quotes branding yep um and she showed all of us and she

02:57:05.160 said it was a symbol for the elements and it was i still can't remember if she said greek or latin

02:57:09.980 or something but it was another language symbolically and also looked like the elements

02:57:13.980 like a symbol for water and air and earth and whatnot so it was it was a symbol and but what

02:57:18.560 we were told it meant overall is it was a commitment to our growth which is where the

02:57:23.080 the indoctrination leading up to this moment kicks in because not only am i committed to this group

02:57:29.560 and I'm committed to Lauren and I'm committed to my growth. But I have also learned through the

02:57:34.860 many, many years of programs and workshops that I've taken that no pain, no gain. And there's

02:57:40.940 all these other correlations that I don't believe anymore, that pain is love and love is pain.

02:57:45.720 And you have to experience pain to grow and to love and all these other, you know, word salad 0.67

02:57:51.320 bullshit meanings that were part of our belief system. And then in addition to that, we have the

02:57:56.560 the female male training that we'd been learning that women and this is Keith's misogynist beliefs

02:58:03.300 around women is that the you know we are always looking for the back door we lack commitment

02:58:07.320 we're too feelings driven and we don't have any honor or character and this is my opportunity 1.00

02:58:13.540 to prove that I'm not that way so even when I'm like literally looking for the back door in this

02:58:18.580 little um complex this duplex that I later found out belonged to Allison I'm in my head I'm gas 1.00

02:58:26.160 letting myself and saying, you know, this is what women do. You can't back out now. You said you 1.00

02:58:30.940 were going to do it and you got to do it. Just fucking do it. Just get on the table and do it 1.00

02:58:33.820 and prove that you can do it. And I did it. And I did probably one of the most difficult physical

02:58:39.560 things I've ever done other than childbirth to be branded with a clatterizing iron in a ceremony

02:58:47.900 that took somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes without anesthetic. And that is something that

02:58:54.260 I was only able to do because I completely disassociated. I didn't know that at the time,

02:58:58.440 but I was thinking about the love of my family, the love of my son, getting through childbirth,

02:59:03.260 knowing that I could do that, I could do it again. And I'd also seen what happened to the

02:59:06.140 other women who went before me. It looked like torture. And I was determined to be strong and 1.00

02:59:12.100 prove to everybody that I could do it because I'm a strong fucking woman and I'm a badass and I'm 0.97

02:59:17.140 going to be part of this group. And that's what it takes to be part of the group. And so I did it. 0.97

02:59:21.580 Why did it take 30 to 40 minutes? 1.00

02:59:26.140 Because she would do a line and then stop. 0.91

02:59:29.960 And then Lauren would recite something and I would repeat it back.

02:59:35.580 It may have been less.

02:59:37.720 It's one of the reasons why I was not a witness in the trial.

02:59:40.940 It was repeated branding.

02:59:42.020 I thought it was just one brand.

02:59:44.500 So it was repeated branding. 0.94

02:59:46.140 In other words, burning of your skin.

02:59:47.760 I thought it was just one mark that one time.

02:59:50.540 pass me that pen yeah it was like imagine a cauterizing iron has a tip like a pen and every

02:59:58.000 it basically slices through your flesh in a line so you'd be like like so every line that you see

03:00:05.400 in that diagram was done individually and some of the lines took longer than others and that's why

03:00:10.980 i was determined um to do it quickly because i wanted to be over with so it may have it may have

03:00:16.220 been less for me, maybe 25 minutes or so. I know some of the women took almost an hour because they 1.00

03:00:21.760 had to stop and like gather their wits to keep going. So you weren't the only one getting branded 0.99

03:00:28.280 that night. I was the third of the fourth miracle. Wow. That's kind of worse in a way. You know,

03:00:37.320 I'd rather be first, I guess. So you don't hear the shrieks before you. Yeah. I honestly don't

03:00:45.120 remember that much about the night, but I, I remember looking at one of the women that I was

03:00:49.340 branded with. And at first we were wearing surgical masks, um, because of the smell. And I remember

03:00:54.980 looking, seeing her eyes like over the top of the mask and just, and like just pure terror in both 0.99

03:00:59.680 of our eyes of like what in the actual fuck. And then we just went for it. And yeah, you know, I, 0.99

03:01:08.140 I do remember like, you know, making light of it and trying to, you know, muscle through it with

03:01:12.900 humor and completely disassociated um later i got to see the video because there was a trial

03:01:20.540 against the doctor and um i mean that was horrific also that that even still existed

03:01:26.540 and that was kept which was also you saw the video of her branding you

03:01:31.420 i had to watch it for the trial whoa whoa yeah and i'm by the way was the only woman in dos

03:01:39.800 that would speak to that

03:01:42.420 because they were still either too afraid to speak

03:01:45.820 or still loyal to Keith

03:01:47.740 and had believed that it was a good thing to do.

03:01:52.100 What was this lunatic quote doctor saying?

03:01:55.440 How was she defending her branding of you?

03:02:00.500 Actually, she went on, was it 2020 with Nikki?

03:02:05.060 She went on Dateline to defend herself

03:02:08.140 and is still loyal to Keith,

03:02:10.860 even though she's had her doctor's license taken away

03:02:13.520 and would be, I'd let it go and forgive her

03:02:21.880 and would have had a very different approach

03:02:23.800 had she just been like, 0.96

03:02:25.060 hey, that was a major fuck up on my part. 0.97

03:02:27.660 But she, even to the day, to the end, 0.96

03:02:30.160 till now says that we committed to this thing

03:02:35.080 knowing that we wouldn't know the details.

03:02:36.740 She branded me knowing that the symbol was not what we said it was.

03:02:40.980 And by the way, that evening itself is not what woke me up.

03:02:44.520 It was finding out that it was Keith's initials in the monogram.

03:02:49.060 That's the big reveal.

03:02:49.760 And there's proof that she, sorry?

03:02:53.460 That's the big reveal about this, right?

03:02:55.680 It's like it wasn't a symbol of the elements at all.

03:02:59.900 It was the initials KR for him.

03:03:02.240 You've been branded with another man's initials.

03:03:04.200 yes that's that's my body that's like one or two days after the uh branding that's us inside

03:03:12.400 you can see so clearly now just for the listening audience it's a k capital k on its side so the

03:03:17.800 straight line is at top at the top and then the r is in reverse inside the the lower triangle you

03:03:25.640 can see it if you zoom out it's it's clearly kr so we actually have a we have a bit from the vow

03:03:31.980 of you confronting lauren your best friend on the fact that this is not the elements this is keith

03:03:38.760 ranieri's initials uh and here's that it's not five i didn't make the brand okay yeah i know you

03:03:45.420 didn't make the brands lauren and now i just looked at it from the side and it's kr i have 0.89

03:03:50.520 keith initials beside my vagina do you think nippy's ever going to want to go down there again 0.82

03:03:55.440 wow like i mean is keith behind us is keith the one who organized this 0.97

03:04:02.320 it's not something that we discussed sarah and it's not lauren lauren it's irrelevant lauren

03:04:09.560 that started by a bunch of women and they got permission from keith to use some of the tools 0.99

03:04:15.020 he gave them permission to use collateral and penance okay but he didn't know about the branding 1.00

03:04:20.360 he knew about it but he didn't cause it and he didn't create the brand the girl did

03:04:28.040 oh oh my god i haven't seen this in a while it's so what's that bringing up

03:04:34.180 i mean so what's not in the vow that it's not too super clear is that i

03:04:39.580 knew more than i let lauren know that i know if that makes sense so i was trying to figure

03:04:45.440 because you were tape recording so like something had switched for you yes like i was more out than

03:04:50.900 she knew and so to hear it to to hear me to ask her straight up and to hear her pause and not

03:04:56.840 answer me is just i just like my my whole body is shaking just remembering that time period those

03:05:04.700 two weeks where i we you know we were out we had figured out the keys initials were my body we'd

03:05:11.720 spoken to Mark Vicente the man who originally introduced me we had shared what we knew I knew

03:05:16.900 about the branding he had heard all this stuff about the sex we're putting it all together and 0.94

03:05:20.620 we were like holy fuck like our worlds had just got flipped upside down but we knew that we 1.00

03:05:26.460 couldn't just you know go to them and and be like you're a cult and you're a sociopath and you're 1.00

03:05:32.260 a sex trafficker we had to play our cards right because otherwise they were going to turn on us 0.87

03:05:35.960 because we'd seen them turn on people who defected so we had to kind of figure out a strategy where

03:05:41.220 we were like, wait, what's going on? That's why when I'm hearing it, do you remember? It was like

03:05:47.280 it, we were, we were kind of double agents. We were like, wait, his initials are on my body.

03:05:51.760 And do we know about, like, does he know about this? I knew he knew about the branding

03:05:54.840 because I already figured that out from a number of other, like we'd put things together. So I had

03:06:00.880 to pretend. Once you start talking. Yes. Yeah. We all started talking. So can we talk about the

03:06:06.860 moment you you came home from the branding and saw nippy for the first time and nippy you like

03:06:13.660 what describe that moment when you find out sarah's been branded so i was actually asleep with

03:06:19.480 our son when she got home well that's that's the night that i came home but then but six weeks

03:06:24.700 later is when i found out i was in new york city she was uh in vancouver and i got a phone call

03:06:31.180 and she told me about it and i was driving uh with a friend of mine who's no longer a friend

03:06:38.380 and um she told me and my initial reaction was wait what like i didn't i didn't mark tell you

03:06:48.920 mark told me first yeah mark told him that she'd been branded or that it was keith's initials that

03:06:54.060 that she'd been branded with keith he hasn't seen it yet i hadn't seen it yet and there was a part

03:07:00.120 of me that was like there's got to be more to the story right and then i was like okay my wife

03:07:05.820 potentially got physically hurt here like i'm piecing it all together and then it dawned on me

03:07:13.220 we might be in the grips of something diabolical here and we need to get out and i need to get my

03:07:20.100 family out as quickly as possible from this and mark wasn't sure if i was gonna be all in or

03:07:27.080 whatever because you know everyone had their doubts right and they didn't think keith was

03:07:31.040 going to be this you know and you have to admit to yourself but it didn't it was by the end of

03:07:36.740 the conversation i was like okay how are we going to blow this up and i was pissed obviously and i

03:07:43.020 had to you know reconcile all the primordial reactions to having your wife physically hurt

03:07:48.680 i didn't know that me being around keith would have been smart because i don't know really what

03:07:56.020 i would have done had i had to confront him um and we made a lot of really good decisions in a

03:08:04.820 short amount of time to blow this up um a lot of that is documented in the vow it's very it's very

03:08:10.380 powerful to see you all working behind the scenes it was a gift to us all for you guys to start

03:08:15.340 taping and filming and mark mark was a videographer right wasn't he yeah like he was part of your

03:08:22.840 filmed all this filmed all the stuff that hung him yeah well he he was a filmmaker before he

03:08:27.960 got into nexium and then he was kind of hired internally to document everything because keith

03:08:31.820 wanted a library of his genius to live on and mark was incredibly skilled dp and and trained

03:08:37.800 a bunch of people in nexium to film every waking moment and sleeping moment sometimes of keith

03:08:43.820 and all the trainings and all his all his wisdom so as soon as shit went sideways uh we just

03:08:50.980 continued to film so so smart we didn't know this was going to be an hbo series we just knew right

03:08:57.000 if anything we were filming things to protect ourselves yeah i mean that's kind of how we

03:09:01.900 thought about it at the time we thought okay look we didn't do anything wrong here the perpetrator

03:09:06.240 is keith ranieri but we know that they're going to come after us start making stuff up about us

03:09:11.000 start gaslighting us saying victimize themselves to us so we need to which they did which they did

03:09:16.580 which I tried I mean Claire came to Vancouver to try to get me arrested she flew to Vancouver to

03:09:23.220 speak to the Vancouver police from Bronfman and made up a bunch of things I stole from them

03:09:29.400 it was theft mischief and fraud and all of those things I think you know I had to hire a criminal

03:09:37.140 defense lawyer I you know it was a very bad stressful time some of my friends that you know

03:09:42.500 Ultimately, people saw the truth that were loyal at the time.

03:09:45.780 They called me, and they were like, yeah, she came to me,

03:09:47.820 and she said, okay, give me the dirt on Nippy and Sarah that you have.

03:09:51.740 I'm sure.

03:09:52.180 She's like, I don't have any.

03:09:54.080 They accurately deduced that they were in an existential crisis,

03:09:59.260 that NXIVM and its fate hung in the balance.

03:10:04.000 Yeah, we created a lot of problems for them.

03:10:06.020 And you mentioned that Keith knew that it was his initials

03:10:08.220 that were being used in the brand.

03:10:09.340 There was evidence of that submitted during his 2019 trial.

03:10:14.560 This clip we're going to play here is via USA Today, and it's Keith and the actress Alison Mack, who we've mentioned a couple times here.

03:10:22.720 She was one of the stars of the show Smallville and was a critical part of all this, including Doss and the branding and so on, and then a master of, quote, slaves, and his sort of right-hand person.

03:10:34.460 And here's the two of them on tape discussing the brand.

03:10:38.380 Do you think the person who's being branded should be completely nude and sort of held to the table like a sort of almost like a sacrifice?

03:10:50.280 I don't know if that's a feeling of submission, you know, videoing it from different angles or whatever gives collateral.

03:11:03.320 It probably should be a more vulnerable position.

03:11:08.380 type of a thing back leg slightly for a leg spread straight like being feet being held to

03:11:15.000 the side of the table hands probably above the head being held almost like tied down like a

03:11:19.440 sacrificial whatever and the person should ask to be branded

03:11:23.820 okay should say please brand me it would be an honor or something like that

03:11:30.820 an honor i want to wear for the rest of my life i don't know

03:11:34.020 And they did make the women say something like that, something along the lines of honor.

03:11:45.300 Master, would you brand me it would be an honor, which is basically him proving in his mind that we asked for it, that it was a consensual thing.

03:11:53.840 Oh, that must be so galling to listen to.

03:11:58.100 Horrific.

03:11:59.000 And also vindicating because he's in jail.

03:12:01.200 And to that point, there were still people saying who were defending him. He had nothing to do with the branding. This is a bunch of women who made some bad decisions and they shouldn't have done it. And Keith had nothing to do with the branding. And now there's video or audio evidence of not only that he knew about it, but he came up with the idea of how to do it and pass it off to Allison so that she would take the fall.

03:12:24.760 So it's triply, there's no word, astonishing, horrific, all the things.

03:12:33.200 You get the deep inside of a guy who's just diabolical.

03:12:36.800 But you know what we're missing?

03:12:38.520 I want to address that portion of the audience that's like,

03:12:41.400 well, that was not a great decision, but you made it.

03:12:44.720 You accepted this brand.

03:12:46.500 It went well beyond.

03:12:47.380 That's not why he's in jail right now.

03:12:49.120 It was a sex trafficking scheme.

03:12:51.600 I mean, he was having young women who he was brainwashing into starving themselves nearly to death, entering this so-called sisterhood, which was really a sex cult, meant to service him.

03:13:05.020 You weren't one of those, Sarah, right?

03:13:06.740 But many other women were basically being groomed. 0.99

03:13:10.980 I mean, not basically. 1.00

03:13:12.020 They were being groomed to be Keith Raniere's sex slave. 0.99

03:13:17.180 Yep. 0.99

03:13:17.660 And that's the thing.

03:13:18.360 When people say you chose it, you could have left, whatever.

03:13:20.400 it's really important to understand in my mind, I've committed to this game, like in a fraternity

03:13:25.760 or sorority where someone's telling me what to do. And I'm saying, yes, because that's the

03:13:29.940 commitment. A vow of obedience is what I've done. I think this is an exercise. And one of my

03:13:35.640 exercises is to get this brand. So I do it. Other women had other things. And so the collateral,

03:13:41.420 this is a key point. It's like a gun to the head. If you don't do the things, your collateral is

03:13:45.600 going to be released so that's not really a choice in the cult space they call it uh about

03:13:51.100 about uh binded choice abounded sorry bounded choice abounded choice where like there there 0.98

03:13:57.520 there's no actually no way out you you have to do the black man yes so the other women had 0.95

03:14:03.980 assignments like you know go seduce keith india talked about that in in her story that that was 0.96

03:14:10.360 her assignment and other women had to do other things with keith and that was their assignment 0.96

03:14:15.220 And that's what they committed to. And they went along with it as well, because what are you going to do? You're going to lose everything and also admit, hey, I just made a really bad decision, which is one of the components of it that keeps people kind of, you know, doubling down.

03:14:30.020 the um india oxenberg story she's katherine's daughter they join this again katherine has

03:14:38.220 such guilt over this because she thought she was bringing her daughter to a self-help 0.97

03:14:42.700 program yeah to help her learn business skills and did not foresee what was going to happen

03:14:48.460 shortly into it katherine recognized this is not for me i i don't know i'm out but india was

03:14:55.160 getting something out of the lessons and stayed. And before Catherine knew it, India was completely

03:15:02.480 untethered from her, was being intentionally separated from her, her loving mother. And

03:15:08.520 Catherine knew she's gone. And now it's turned from like, it's turned into a rescue operation

03:15:16.380 and was doing everything within her power to try to get India back. But India at this point is 0.51

03:15:21.920 brainwashed. And the mere threat of like, I'm going to take you out. You need to get out. Keith 1.00

03:15:27.840 is a threat would otherize Catherine even more. I mean, that the person who's inside the cult is

03:15:32.900 like, oh, hell no. And Catherine spoke to me in her first interview about this before India had

03:15:41.180 got and pulled out before Keith had been arrested. And India and Catherine is a very well-known

03:15:48.820 Hollywood actor, and going to the media was truly her last resort. Here's a little bit of that

03:15:56.080 interview from early, or it was late 2017. Any program that seduces people to abandon their

03:16:04.940 lives to serve their agenda rather than empowering your pre-existing life, there's something off

03:16:10.360 about that. So I watched her get sucked in. The more I learned, because defectors came and told

03:16:15.840 me about their experiences, the more concerned I became. And I realized that I did, well, I did 0.89

03:16:21.640 an intervention with her at the end of May and I failed. This is my last resort, going to the media.

03:16:26.860 My daughter is very, very angry with me right now. And she has every right to be angry with me 0.70

03:16:31.840 because I would hate my mom if my mom came out and publicly exposed her in this way, exposed me.

03:16:38.840 But I love her to the end of the world. And I am only doing this to bring awareness because

03:16:44.500 without awareness there can be no outrage and unless there's outrage the authorities are not

03:16:48.820 going to step in and do what they should do which is shut this down oh what's your reaction to seeing

03:16:57.140 that sarah i remember that interview i was so grateful i don't know if you remember but i was

03:17:03.440 your team had asked me to be there and i i wasn't um emotionally strong enough to to do live um tv

03:17:10.600 I just didn't think I could handle it. But I was so grateful that Catherine had the strength to speak when we couldn't and brings back a lot of memories of a time when, you know, we were all just throwing our punches and that media punch and, you know, Catherine's role in the takedown was really important.

03:17:28.920 we all had a very different role me with showing the physical abuse and um mark vicente and bonnie

03:17:36.580 and katherine like and nippy like there was there wasn't many of us that were willing to talk people

03:17:41.240 before us too yeah and people before us who tried and in 2009 like it just like this was a fight

03:17:47.540 that took so much of our life force you know our life force in it and resources and resources and

03:17:53.320 And then afterwards, and watching it, it just brings back a lot of memories of a very stressful time

03:17:59.500 because we didn't know what was going to happen in the trial.

03:18:01.560 We didn't know if Keith was going to be convicted or not.

03:18:04.540 Even now to this day, he's still appealing.

03:18:07.560 You know, a couple this week found out his third or fourth appeal was denied.

03:18:11.360 He's still trying.

03:18:12.660 Like, it's an ongoing stressor.

03:18:15.660 And seeing that video is, yeah, it's a reminder of what we've been through.

03:18:22.740 and also so happy.

03:18:25.960 Let me tell you something petty about me.

03:18:29.500 You just said that you didn't accept our invitation

03:18:32.320 to come on because you were not ready for live,

03:18:34.200 which makes absolutely perfect sense.

03:18:36.560 I remember at the time, because I really wanted you,

03:18:39.460 your story was amazing

03:18:40.400 and we were really covering this case aggressively

03:18:42.440 and honestly, and I was so disappointed.

03:18:45.420 And I remember thinking,

03:18:46.600 she doesn't want to come on because I was with Fox.

03:18:49.360 Oh no, no.

03:18:50.540 You know, we make up these stories in our heads, right?

03:18:53.320 I mean, I'm just sitting here.

03:18:54.520 Well, I mean, that's the time we're in too, right?

03:18:57.840 Yeah.

03:18:58.260 Yes.

03:18:58.700 Oh, I'm so glad that we've cleared up this dynamic. 1.00

03:19:03.800 No, it's stupid. 0.95

03:19:04.980 I just tell it because I bet there's a million women out there and guys who tell themselves stories about, oh, it's something about me. 1.00

03:19:11.340 There's something wrong with me.

03:19:12.320 Why I didn't get this thing or why I didn't get invited to this thing or this person didn't say yes to my invitation.

03:19:17.940 We make up the worst stories about ourselves.

03:19:19.820 Like there's something wrong with me. I'm, I'm branded too. Right. I'm branded in a way. And then you, you know, you talk to the person, you find out I'm a fucking idiot. Why do I do this to myself?

03:19:30.560 i love that you shared that and i love that i got to to tell you because it's you know it's been a

03:19:38.880 long time a long time coming and i've been so grateful for your um activism around it because

03:19:44.640 it was such a that interview was such a um an extra punch in an already um very we just didn't

03:19:52.380 know it was going to happen and that was that really helped us so because the authorities

03:19:55.880 weren't doing anything no they weren't doing anything no no no i mean they did for the record

03:20:02.060 i show sarah clips of of meg and kelly on off twitter i go see she gets it oh yeah you get it 0.84

03:20:08.260 we we we we know you get it yeah oh thank you especially the coffee shit everywhere right now 0.81

03:20:16.540 oh i mean it's terrifying and the more vulnerable people are post-covid and in our weird world where 0.98

03:20:22.520 We don't know who to trust, and the media's falling apart, even more so.

03:20:26.740 So finally, the police, the FBI, they do get involved.

03:20:30.540 It took all of you, all the names you just mentioned, Catherine, all of you.

03:20:34.860 And by the way, I should mention before I forget, India, thank God, finally saw the light, got out,

03:20:41.560 and did her own documentary that she did on her own terms.

03:20:45.900 And so I was very happy for her and for Catherine, too.

03:20:48.540 I mean, that story individually is just about a mother's incredible love for her child and what a mother will do.

03:20:54.000 But she's in this, the vow to all of you are there working, as you say, your own pieces of it.

03:20:58.820 Everybody had a different sort of gift and a risk to take.

03:21:01.980 And ultimately he does, he does get brought down. 0.59

03:21:05.780 He gets arrested in Mexico and still the top echelon of the women are like running after the car as they take him away.

03:21:14.900 They just were completely brainwashed. 0.66

03:21:18.540 that he was some sort of messiah.

03:21:20.980 He was genuinely important to them.

03:21:26.220 Yeah, it was nuts.

03:21:30.000 And did you ever think that there actually would be a trial

03:21:33.480 or that he'd kill himself or flee again

03:21:36.840 or somehow find a way to manipulate the system?

03:21:39.700 Because he's a very good manipulator to get the charges dropped.

03:21:43.420 Well, narcissists don't kill themselves.

03:21:46.480 That's a good point.

03:21:48.540 i did think that he would that he was a flight risk there you know claire owned this island in

03:21:56.100 fiji and um i did we i just really did think that he would get away with it somehow even with the

03:22:02.620 every appeal i'm like oh my goodness we're gonna are we going back to square one he is so

03:22:07.320 manipulative he's so conniving he's such a sociopath will he get out of it i mean there 0.96

03:22:13.160 There was a point where I remember thinking, shit, this is going to be the next five to ten years of our life with Claire Bronfman just filing suits against us, bankrupting us, you know, because that's what she did. 0.97

03:22:26.220 That's what she did, very litigious on his behalf. 0.99

03:22:28.720 Sorry, keep going, Nippy. 0.99

03:22:29.900 Yeah, and I just remember thinking, shit, this is not good. 0.98

03:22:33.100 And I remember thinking about my kids, you know, when my one son at the time was like, his childhood is going to have this going on until he's nine or ten. 0.95

03:22:42.240 and i just remember thinking like and then once the new york times article came out

03:22:47.780 i felt i didn't feel entirely safe but i felt safer because i knew they had other problems

03:22:55.540 and sarah and nippy weren't you know enemy number one we were because they had to put out a lot more

03:23:02.660 fires because a lot more people were speaking and a lot of other problems were happening and

03:23:07.020 They took their guns off us.

03:23:09.320 I didn't know that we were in the clear.

03:23:11.360 And the way the FBI and the way this thing happened and how quickly it happened,

03:23:16.420 he was arrested in March of 18, and he was tried and convicted by June of 19.

03:23:21.000 So in under two years, really, this whole thing happened.

03:23:25.000 And he was sentenced to 120 years.

03:23:27.420 And?

03:23:28.280 Oh, and five years probation.

03:23:31.240 That's my favorite part of it.

03:23:33.500 That's perfect.

03:23:34.260 And what, can you explain what, for what was he convicted?

03:23:37.640 What did the court find?

03:23:39.600 There were seven counts.

03:23:40.380 I don't know.

03:23:41.020 I think it was a wire fraud, sex trafficking.

03:23:45.640 Conspiracy to commit.

03:23:49.160 Oh man, it's been a while since I've recited these.

03:23:51.180 There's labor, RICO, there were RICO acts.

03:23:52.640 But the heart of the case was the manipulation of the young women

03:23:56.480 into becoming like his sex cult. 0.95

03:24:00.560 Yes.

03:24:01.580 Yeah, they didn't use those words.

03:24:03.420 I think it's important to mention Moira Penza because she read the article, and it wasn't tried in the northern district.

03:24:12.120 It was tried in the southern district, right?

03:24:14.080 Eastern.

03:24:14.560 Eastern district.

03:24:16.140 Would JFK be eastern district?

03:24:19.060 Where's the Brooklyn?

03:24:20.200 Yes.

03:24:21.380 JFK airport.

03:24:22.160 So that would be the eastern district because that's where the sex trafficking happened at a JFK airport, technically.

03:24:26.360 So that became their jurisdiction, so she was able to try the case.

03:24:30.880 because originally we went to the northern district and they were like well you agreed to

03:24:35.000 it and then they were like cool story thanks and didn't there's a whole case there the corruption

03:24:40.960 in that district it's hard to tell it it's hard for me to believe that he could have gotten away

03:24:47.060 with the things that he'd gotten away with with the complaints that have been going on up there

03:24:51.540 without greasing some wheels i don't know how that works i'm kind of again i'm out of my lane

03:24:56.040 in that but it just seems to me there was a lot of abuses of power that are going on up there

03:24:59.600 and if I were to pick somewhere to try and get away with it,

03:25:03.200 I think upstate New York would be kind of a sleepy place

03:25:06.180 where you could just kind of get away with it

03:25:07.880 and no one would be suspecting.

03:25:09.400 That's my guess.

03:25:10.080 No, I know.

03:25:10.700 We used to call it Smallbany because it's like,

03:25:13.380 it's a small, I think people were shocked

03:25:15.480 that anything like this could happen.

03:25:16.840 There may have been a measure of embarrassment

03:25:18.320 that it went on for so long right under everyone's nose.

03:25:23.540 So you may not be wrong on that.

03:25:25.920 So did you have to testify at the trial?

03:25:29.600 I did not. I was one of the first people to speak with Moira and her team at the FBI and spent two

03:25:36.580 and a half days with my lawyer and just gave them everything I knew. I set the scene, like

03:25:40.720 how the company worked, the straight path, everything I knew about DOS, all my photos,

03:25:45.960 all my text messages, everything. I think I actually gave them my phone and my computer

03:25:49.220 to mirror and said, have at it. And then that brought in other people and subpoenas and

03:25:56.320 everything. I ended up not having to testify, I believe, because I would have been testifying

03:26:01.000 against Lauren and Lauren in the end turned on Keith. So I didn't need to. I think also I would

03:26:07.920 have been a bad witness because I had done a lot of press at that point. And that would have been

03:26:15.680 something that Mark Ignifolo would have gone in on. Like, isn't it true, Sarah, that you've written

03:26:19.740 the book. You know, I wrote a book like, so I wasn't a good witness at that point. And what

03:26:26.700 had happened to me wasn't even so bad compared to what had happened to other women. So I didn't

03:26:32.520 have to testify. Thank goodness. I also had a newborn infant and was breastfeeding and I was

03:26:36.660 did not want to have to go to Brooklyn and testify and see that mother. Did you ever get

03:26:41.260 the chance to like have the come to Jesus moment with Lauren, like friend to friend?

03:26:46.100 no i wish i had i wish i had the closest we've had is um she wrote a letter around just before

03:26:54.560 her conviction um a very heartfelt apology which i totally believe she seems to have completely

03:27:00.740 woken up takes full responsibility for what she was going for how she was able to maintain the

03:27:07.020 cognitive dissonance and you know basically lied to me to bring me bring me into this thing so she 0.99

03:27:12.280 could be in keith's good graces her testimony did put the nail in the coffin for yeah her testimony

03:27:17.560 meant that i didn't have to testify and yeah it was the final what specifically do you remember

03:27:22.820 like what what was the crux of what she said that was so damning for him oof um i think she laid out

03:27:30.660 his psychology pretty well yeah and and just how specifically i'd have to go back and look at the

03:27:36.040 transcripts it's been a while but i think specifically how he masterminded the whole

03:27:40.740 thing and how it was like that from the beginning, not just with Doss, but this is the world that he

03:27:46.400 created. And that's, um, I don't know legally what it was that, that Ford, like why she was

03:27:53.620 the star witness exactly. But, um, she knew where all the bodies were buried. Yes, exactly. Yes,

03:27:59.380 exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when we did our NBC primetime special on this, a separate show,

03:28:04.220 um, we got into, he has this long history of being a pyramid scheme guy, a failed businessman,

03:28:10.740 like this was not his first fraud or attempted fraud he'd had actually a couple before this he

03:28:16.240 was a con man yeah 100 yep yeah he he'd been caught and then of course when we heard about

03:28:24.620 that story he spun that that you know he was a threat to the government and they had to shut

03:28:29.460 him down and of course that's what happens when you teach ethics in the world and you know so

03:28:34.920 He had a lot of good people advocating for him. 0.73

03:28:38.740 So Lauren goes to jail too. 1.00

03:28:40.340 Didn't she, or she, she got three years probation.

03:28:43.140 Is that what happened?

03:28:43.820 Yeah, probation.

03:28:44.080 Probation, yeah.

03:28:44.960 Okay, three years probation.

03:28:45.800 Just to wrap up.

03:28:47.300 Yeah.

03:28:48.260 Sorry, there's an overlap.

03:28:49.740 What you asked earlier, I've been begging my lawyers to be able to have, you know,

03:28:55.880 a heart-to-heart or Zoom or see her.

03:28:57.940 But until there's a civil case still, until that's wrapped up, we're not allowed to communicate.

03:29:02.760 But I hope that one day we will.

03:29:03.980 I don't know if we'll ever be best friends again, but I, I'd love to just close that chapter with

03:29:09.420 her personally. Please give us a heads up when that's going to happen because we will listen to

03:29:13.620 and we'll definitely talk about it here on the show. Um, so she gets probation. Alison Mack, 1.00

03:29:19.320 the Smallville actress actually got, I think she got, uh, three years in jail. She served two.

03:29:24.720 She's out now. If my math is correct. Yes. Uh, Claire Bronfman got sentenced to actual jail

03:29:30.780 time a year did she get a year or more she got triple the the maximum sentence she's still in

03:29:37.620 triple the minimum sentence she's still in jail she'll be in jail i think till 2025 and she just

03:29:42.380 got moved to a halfway house i think like two three weeks ago in the bronx or the queen or queens

03:29:48.420 far far way away from fiji um so there's been actual accountability there's been actual

03:29:56.260 punishment for those involved and then keith in jail for the rest of his life plus the probation

03:30:00.620 as you point out at the end.

03:30:02.600 So where does that leave you guys, right?

03:30:06.020 You tamed the tiger, like you got it.

03:30:08.960 It happened.

03:30:10.360 NXIVM is done.

03:30:12.080 It's been exposed and he's in jail

03:30:14.800 and all of his enablers are in jail.

03:30:16.840 You've come out publicly, the world knows.

03:30:19.580 So what happens to you after that?

03:30:24.380 There's a lot of therapy, a lot of time in nature.

03:30:28.400 COVID was actually a wonderful heat.

03:30:30.340 It was a blessing.

03:30:31.440 Blessing for us, actually, to pause and just go for hikes and make pancakes and be with our family.

03:30:39.060 Sorry.

03:30:41.220 We have a beautiful family.

03:30:46.020 And we had time to enjoy it.

03:30:48.140 We'd been in the group for so long and then fighting to expose the group for so long, we hadn't actually had a break.

03:30:54.240 And that was much need to break.

03:30:57.060 And then the HBO documentary came out in COVID and then our lives blew up again in a very strange and also very meaningful way to have people reach out to us and say, holy shit, I didn't realize I was in a cult or in a abusive relationship until I saw The Vow and like thousands of messages and letters.

03:31:19.240 And because it was COVID and we'd stopped acting, we decided to start a little podcast to keep the conversations going.

03:31:27.520 Well, we had someone reach out to us whose birthday it is today, actually.

03:31:31.000 Our associate producer, Jess Tardy, wrote us an email and said, you guys should do a podcast and laid out a season for us.

03:31:39.040 Call it a little bit culty, call it this.

03:31:40.580 And I was in the inertia of no.

03:31:42.160 I was done having my personal life becoming other people's entertainment.

03:31:45.740 It was kind of my reluctance to be a part of a documentary in the first place.

03:31:49.240 Um, and Sarah was kind of like, well, maybe, and then we spoke to someone else about it.

03:31:54.400 Citizens of sound evangelical Christians also reached out to us.

03:31:59.800 So those two people kind of came together and sort of laid out this path for a podcast.

03:32:03.560 And we, you know, we love talking about it and it was a healing, like another, another,

03:32:07.960 other people that we know needed to go not talk about it.

03:32:10.780 And for us talking about it was very cathartic and helping others see the red flags and heal

03:32:16.820 was our recovery.

03:32:18.940 So that's been our recovery, and I wrote a memoir that encompasses my time in the book,

03:32:25.560 but now we're working on more of a part two of everything we've learned since the podcast.

03:32:32.160 I'm sure it'll change.

03:32:33.000 It's kind of painful with all the experts who've helped us.

03:32:35.340 I'm sure it's going to change, and you're going to change.

03:32:38.100 I'm sorry.

03:32:38.780 Sorry, say that again?

03:32:39.920 I was just saying, I'm sure it's going to change, like what you've learned, and you're going to change.

03:32:44.320 You're still pretty close to it all.

03:32:46.460 Oh, yeah.

03:32:47.180 I mean, that's the thing.

03:32:48.160 When I look back at the memoir, I was like, I was still healing.

03:32:52.380 I was only a year out when I decided to write that,

03:32:54.700 which in many ways was a draft of an understanding.

03:32:59.380 I know so much more about cults and coercion and narcissism and gaslighting

03:33:04.160 and all of these things that have become such a huge part of the zeitgeist now.

03:33:09.220 I mean, half of my female friends talk about this and their dating partners.

03:33:12.340 I think this could be helpful even if you're not in a cult

03:33:15.080 or getting recruited by one.

03:33:16.300 Go ahead, Nippy.

03:33:17.180 I was going to say, serendipitously, as we've educated ourselves on what goes on in cults, a lot of the parallels that go on there are going on everywhere you look, whether it be in politics, whether it be with the vaccine.

03:33:33.980 There's not any real field that's not immune to what these abuses of power look like and sound like.

03:33:40.140 So putting language to it has been educational, and it's also been a really important journey for us because we're running into it in our day-to-day lives.

03:33:51.800 And I want my kids to know what this looks like and sounds like, and I want other people to know what it looks like and sounds like.

03:33:57.000 And I think if people are armed with this education, armed with this language, they can walk into situations and point it out in real time.

03:34:03.560 So when you're faced with something like in your situation or other people's situations, they can go, oh, that's just like this.

03:34:09.600 just like this and they can at least attempt to have a civil discourse about it and when the

03:34:14.520 red flags come up they'll know what they're looking at so they can make an informed decision

03:34:18.520 it's a way of inoculating yourself to be informed and to recognize these warning signs and just know

03:34:26.000 when it comes to you whether it's in a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a business an employer or

03:34:30.920 a real live cult that you may have inadvertently fallen into thank you both so much for coming on

03:34:37.640 and telling this story again.

03:34:39.300 I know it wasn't easy,

03:34:41.400 but I really hope you've done some good here too.

03:34:43.740 I know that you have,

03:34:44.400 and I hope you feel okay about it.

03:34:46.280 I got blessed.

03:34:46.820 Thank you, Megan.

03:34:47.620 Appreciate it.

03:34:49.180 Thank you so much, Megan.

03:34:50.440 Maybe one day you'll come and tell us

03:34:51.780 your full Fox News story on our podcast.

03:34:55.180 I'll come on a little bit culty.

03:34:56.620 Yeah, I've got a couple of those for you.

03:34:58.520 Fox News, a little bit culty.

03:35:00.160 Oh, sure.

03:35:01.660 I'd be happy to.

03:35:02.940 The more I learn,

03:35:03.800 the more I'm like,

03:35:04.360 oh my God.

03:35:05.120 there was no kool-aid but we were one step away lots of love to you both a water cooler

03:35:11.040 that's right good luck with it i'm glad i'm glad we got to clear up the uh the misunderstanding

03:35:17.620 from six years ago oh there wasn't even a misunderstanding this is my own deranged

03:35:22.080 thinking so i thank you for helping me learn to be better see there you go still empowering other

03:35:26.560 women last summer the coolest place in the house was in your freezer this year it's time to love

03:35:35.100 up. Reliance Home Comfort has over 155,000 five-star reviews for delivering the type of

03:35:41.380 outstanding customer experience Canadians have counted on for over 60 years. Right now, don't

03:35:47.160 pay for 12 months on a featured air conditioner or heat pump. Call on the experts that know how

03:35:52.000 to beat the heat. Call on Reliance. Conditions apply. See website for details. Order up. Thank

03:36:01.040 you no no no oh come on this is not happening turn off the water where's the shutoff the pipe

03:36:10.580 there there gosh it's everywhere are we covered for this don't know don't worry a licensed dd

03:36:21.100 insurance advisor can help you get the right insurance coverage to protect your business

03:36:24.720 It's how we're making insurance more human.

03:36:29.380 I have a story that I need to share with you.

03:36:32.500 It's one I've never told publicly before.

03:36:35.060 And to do it right, it took virtually my entire family on my husband's side.

03:36:41.440 January 22, 2021.

03:36:44.740 Much of the world is still shut down due to COVID.

03:36:47.860 Our family still living in Manhattan and getting ready to travel south

03:36:51.880 for the weekend for my nephew's wedding.

03:36:54.720 As I pack up that Friday, my husband Doug calls, relaying that he has just heard from his then 84-year-old mother, Jackie, in Philadelphia.

03:37:04.260 She's received a disturbing phone call from her daughter, Diane.

03:37:09.100 Diane and her partner, Brad, are oyster fishermen on Cape Cod.

03:37:12.940 she was hysterical sobbing and couldn't complete a full sentence but she said that she was in jail

03:37:28.620 on a drunk driving charge and that um she we i needed to get talk to somebody

03:37:39.380 that she had a telephone number 0.69

03:37:42.880 and they were going to talk to me

03:37:45.520 about getting bail

03:37:47.060 and this was on a Friday

03:37:49.820 which I don't know

03:37:54.000 anyway I didn't know much of anything

03:37:57.660 but I kept asking her

03:38:00.560 if she was alright

03:38:02.360 and I just didn't know

03:38:07.940 what to do

03:38:09.160 She just said, I'm so scared.

03:38:12.300 I'm terrified.

03:38:14.420 And I asked her where Brad was.

03:38:20.060 And she said, well, he's in jail too.

03:38:26.380 But she said, I don't really have time.

03:38:29.640 They're not giving me long to talk.

03:38:32.380 You need to call this number.

03:38:35.480 So what did you do next?

03:38:36.480 I called the number, and he told me that the court was closed on Friday, and it was COVID, so they had limited times when you could get in, and he told me to call this lawyer, whose name I can't remember,

03:39:03.700 and he would walk me through getting the bail money.

03:39:10.060 So this was the court that you were talking to saying,

03:39:14.780 you need to talk to a lawyer, here's a number you can call.

03:39:19.000 Yes.

03:39:20.600 And then did you call the lawyer?

03:39:23.040 I did. 1.00

03:39:23.760 I asked him, why is she there on a drunk driving charge when she doesn't drink?

03:39:36.740 And he said, well, she told me she didn't drink, and I believed her.

03:39:42.540 So I've sent off a tox screen, you know, I've sent off for a blood test.

03:39:49.360 I didn't know why Brad was. And at once, either the court told me or the lawyer told

03:39:57.200 that Brad was in because he assaulted a policeman at the scene of the accident.

03:40:04.760 The lawyer told Jackie the bail for both of them was 17,000 bucks.

03:40:09.560 I said, well, I just don't have that kind of cash. I don't have that kind of money to give you.

03:40:16.680 I said, I'm going to have, I'm going to call my son.

03:40:20.520 And she did.

03:40:21.500 And that's where her son, my husband, Doug Brunt, comes in.

03:40:24.780 I was in the car and my mom called and she was distressed and agitated and frustrated

03:40:29.960 saying that she had just gotten off the phone with Diane and Diane had been in a car accident.

03:40:34.940 She broke her nose and she was hysterically bawling from basically the holding cell at the jail on Cape Cod.

03:40:42.920 and that she had this one phone call to make.

03:40:45.560 So she had called my mom, but she needed to be bailed out.

03:40:48.560 Both she and Brad had been arrested.

03:40:50.120 So I'm asking my mom a bunch of questions.

03:40:51.900 You know, what the heck happened?

03:40:53.320 And she was telling me as best she could

03:40:55.480 because it was a short phone call.

03:40:56.780 And apparently Diane was, you know, 1.00

03:40:58.820 sobbing through her broken nose about what had happened.

03:41:01.820 But in short, a car accident,

03:41:04.280 she broke her nose in the car accident.

03:41:06.720 They, the police came,

03:41:08.340 they thought that she had been drinking and driving.

03:41:11.600 The police got aggressive with Diane in response to that.

03:41:14.540 Brad got aggressive with the police to defend Diane, and they arrested them both.

03:41:19.580 And so they're now in jail in Cape Cod.

03:41:23.240 Diane gave my mom this phone number to call, who was her court-appointed lawyer.

03:41:27.720 And my mom had already spoken with this lawyer.

03:41:30.740 She gives me the number saying, it's very confusing.

03:41:33.420 You know, all of this was happening during COVID.

03:41:34.760 And so he had these reasons why the court was about to close.

03:41:39.000 It was a Friday afternoon.

03:41:40.040 It closes early on Fridays now due to COVID.

03:41:42.660 Nobody's even in there due to COVID.

03:41:45.280 And we need to rush $17,000 over to the court

03:41:49.800 or else Diane and Brad are gonna spend 0.98

03:41:51.840 a full weekend in jail.

03:41:53.120 And everything's gonna shut down over the weekend.

03:41:54.920 So they're in there unless we can somehow

03:41:56.780 get the money to bail them out.

03:41:58.660 And we had something like a two hour timeframe.

03:42:01.280 Right, so I remember you called me.

03:42:04.320 You call me and you say-

03:42:05.780 I'm like, honey, handle this.

03:42:06.920 Yeah, basically.

03:42:08.260 And I was like, where's Abby?

03:42:10.040 we need you so we were like wait this is impossible first of all because like the

03:42:16.640 audience doesn't know diane and brad but they are the nicest kindest most upstanding cool people

03:42:23.780 like these are not even potentially drunk driving right lunatics who attack the cops they're not

03:42:28.740 i mean i think if uh if someone got aggressive with diane i could see brad stepping in that

03:42:33.280 that made some sense but otherwise none of it was in character the only thing that gave us pause was

03:42:39.660 it was COVID. Things were nuts. Everyone was behaving bizarrely. So there really was a piece

03:42:46.280 that was like, did they have some sort of a meltdown? Did something like what? It was so

03:42:51.080 bizarre. So mom, mom gave me the phone number. I call the lawyer. He was explaining he needs

03:42:56.440 $17,000 in cash. He, he reiterates much of what my mom told me, which is the window is closing.

03:43:03.120 It's, you know, due to COVID protocols, the whole thing shuts down at, you know, four o'clock on a

03:43:08.140 Friday and it goes dark for the weekend. So we have only this amount of time to get them out of,

03:43:12.820 you know, the holding cell. So, you know, can you get $17,000 in cash to Cape Cod right now?

03:43:19.800 And I'm thinking, I can't get myself to Cape Cod in two hours, let alone $17,000 in cash. So you

03:43:25.180 and I start scrambling for ideas to how to deal with this. Right. So we're like, and it's not that

03:43:29.740 easy to get $17,000 cash like that. So I'm trying to figure out how to get the money. And you're

03:43:34.820 talking to your mom, trying to calm your mom down. You're calling your brothers, letting them know

03:43:38.520 what's happening with Di. Everybody's like, my God, this is a nightmare. And what was the next

03:43:44.580 thing that happened? I'm trying to remember the next step in the chain. We were scrambling around

03:43:48.320 to try to get money. We were talking to the lawyer. We'd ask him questions like, you know,

03:43:51.140 what is a way we can do this? And we had the idea to call Di and Brad's friend in Cape Cod,

03:43:59.300 who has sort of a whale-watching business.

03:44:02.320 He has a number of big charter boats

03:44:04.740 where he can go out and watch the whales off Provincetown.

03:44:07.240 Which we've done with him before.

03:44:08.280 Which we've done with him, yeah, so Steve.

03:44:10.440 And so we call Steve, who, thank God, picks up the phone,

03:44:14.200 and we get him up to speed on the problem.

03:44:17.360 Here's that friend, Steve, from Cape Cod.

03:44:20.400 Apparently this needed to be done locally,

03:44:22.640 so Doug called me because I'm a close friend of both Brad and Diane's.

03:44:29.300 It was a pretty large sum, and he said that I'd be reimbursed after we got them out.

03:44:35.280 But because it was a weekend, things couldn't be done normally.

03:44:40.080 So then we call back to Laura and say, we've got someone on the ground, on the Cape, with the cash.

03:44:46.280 Where do we go?

03:44:47.080 He says, actually, I'm not there now, so there's no one to receive the cash.

03:44:51.660 So he pivoted to saying, you can use cryptocurrency.

03:44:55.740 Because of, again, COVID, the courts will accept, in these extreme circumstances, the

03:45:00.880 courts will actually accept cryptocurrency.

03:45:03.380 And he was saying he was going to give us a wire to send it directly to the court.

03:45:06.660 There was a phone to the court.

03:45:07.660 We could call the court.

03:45:08.560 And they had, you know, they matched up case numbers.

03:45:10.860 And we did call the court.

03:45:12.440 Yeah.

03:45:12.720 We called the court.

03:45:13.900 We dialed the number that the lawyer had given us.

03:45:18.060 We had an official person answer.

03:45:20.480 We were put on hold.

03:45:21.800 They asked us for the case number.

03:45:23.200 We gave them the case number.

03:45:24.320 They looked it up.

03:45:24.940 They said Diane and Brad, they had their names, and they verified everything that we had been told thus far.

03:45:30.860 When we come back, what happened to Brad and Diane?

03:45:35.080 Thankfully, Steve was on the case.

03:45:45.040 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show.

03:45:46.600 We are picking up my conversation with Doug about what happened as soon as we got the instructions on how to get the crypto delivered.

03:45:56.140 So I remember you were in Manhattan at the time.

03:45:59.340 So I guess he went online and found locations where they have crypto kiosks where you can basically insert cash and it comes out on the other end as cryptocurrency.

03:46:07.680 So that's our next plan.

03:46:10.000 But at this point, we're like, this is nuts.

03:46:12.280 This is very sketchy.

03:46:13.260 This can't be real.

03:46:13.600 But I still thought, going back to what we know, Diane's still in jail.

03:46:20.640 It was like, maybe there's a sketchy lawyer involved.

03:46:22.400 But really, we were like, Diane and Brad are in trouble, and we've got to find a way of helping them.

03:46:27.180 And thank God that you enlisted Steve.

03:46:30.580 Yeah, so when we call Steve, we say, it's got to be crypto now.

03:46:33.420 So stand down on the brown bag of cash.

03:46:36.500 And so Steve's thinking, this is nuts.

03:46:39.600 But he's now fully in it.

03:46:41.140 You know, he thought Diane Brad needed rescuing, so he's still in rescue mode.

03:46:45.400 Steve asks for the lawyer's number so he can arrange this payment directly.

03:46:49.520 And here the lawyer gets something very wrong, as Jackie would later explain to me.

03:46:55.440 The town was Barnstable, and he said Barnstable because it's spelled that way.

03:47:05.620 But up there, they call it Barnstable.

03:47:08.600 No one local that would have known straight off.

03:47:11.500 You know, he didn't speak like he was even here.

03:47:13.580 So that was a dead giveaway.

03:47:16.640 That's when Steve decided to drive by Diane and Brad's house and to call the house phone on the way there.

03:47:23.180 Where were Diane and Brad?

03:47:24.960 In our living room.

03:47:28.080 Having a great day.

03:47:29.940 It was a regular perfect day in our lives.

03:47:33.040 Not in jail.

03:47:34.060 Not punching out cops.

03:47:35.640 Happy at home.

03:47:36.300 It had been a long time since we'd been in jail.

03:47:40.460 I was in my recliner and I was very comfortable.

03:47:44.880 In fact, it's a swivel recliner that, you know, goes back and forth.

03:47:49.060 It goes every direction in the house.

03:47:50.980 I live in it.

03:47:52.280 It's perfect.

03:47:53.260 None of it was real.

03:47:54.440 They had no idea any of this was going on.

03:47:57.060 Right.

03:47:57.340 And we'd been running around for hours at this point.

03:47:59.600 Hysterical.

03:48:01.200 They were totally fine.

03:48:03.060 There had been no incident whatsoever.

03:48:05.640 Yeah.

03:48:05.780 Yes, Doug and I, with all of our so-called higher education and city sophistication, had almost been had by some con man until Steve, the Cape Cod whale watch guy, shut the whole thing down.

03:48:20.440 So I just stopped and took a breath and thought it out a little bit and it just didn't make any sense to me at all.

03:48:30.060 He's just, he is so incredibly capable at every aspect of life.

03:48:37.260 Like, he just is just a can-do guy.

03:48:40.120 There's nothing, like, he's unstoppable, especially in, like, his business.

03:48:44.500 And, you know, dealing with stuff on the water, too, makes you that way.

03:48:47.480 Because when you're out on a boat or a ship, you can't walk home if there's a problem.

03:48:52.600 So he has that mentality that wherever he's standing, he can fix the problem.

03:48:57.440 Steve is also, like, a cool customer.

03:49:00.060 Like, he's not, like, he told us after the fact, yeah, he's like, yeah, I mean, when I answered the phone and it was Steve, he said, oh, good, you're home.

03:49:12.100 I have to call Doug.

03:49:12.880 Like, in that tone of voice.

03:49:13.960 He wasn't like, oh, my God, you're safe.

03:49:15.660 You know, he doesn't overreact to anything.

03:49:17.440 He's great in a crisis.

03:49:19.340 And he, when we asked him later, he said, I was going to call you.

03:49:23.440 If you didn't answer, I was going to go to your house.

03:49:25.420 If you weren't there, I was going to go to the Wellfleet police, our town.

03:49:28.440 And if they didn't know anything about it, I was going to end there.

03:49:32.900 If they did, I was going to go to Barnstable with the money.

03:49:35.960 So he was never, he's unflappable.

03:49:38.680 So Steve figured this whole thing out.

03:49:42.300 And Doug and I began asking ourselves, how on earth did we almost fall for this nonsense?

03:49:49.040 Well, it all boiled down to one thing in our defense.

03:49:53.560 We believed that Doug's mom had actually spoken with Diane.

03:49:58.020 That was the key to this whole thing running us out as long as it did, because what we thought we had in the category of things we know wasn't right.

03:50:06.560 That was a bad assumption.

03:50:07.560 Right.

03:50:07.860 They had fooled your mom, which is absolutely amazing that they fooled her about her own daughter's voice.

03:50:14.540 Hence the importance of the broken nose.

03:50:16.300 Yeah, right, right.

03:50:17.620 They had so many tricks. 0.99

03:50:18.920 And then, of course, COVID was just opening the door to so many of these stupid things because we're all, everything was ridiculous then. 0.99

03:50:24.980 Yeah, that's why they didn't, she didn't get it. 0.98

03:50:28.020 Your mom heard a hysterical adult woman claiming she had broken her nose, 0.99

03:50:32.700 which would explain a differed voice, and she went with it. 1.00

03:50:36.560 She believed it.

03:50:37.060 I thought it was Diane, and still, if I could hear it again,

03:50:44.540 I would still think it was Diane.

03:50:47.440 You believed it because why?

03:50:50.120 It sounded like her voice and the panic.

03:50:57.920 I mean, I could take the, it just seemed like she was crying and screaming and not screaming.

03:51:04.860 She was just kind of hysterical.

03:51:07.860 And it sounded like her.

03:51:12.000 The whole situation did not sound like her.

03:51:16.360 But I really couldn't, you know, at the time, I couldn't really work my way through the car accident.

03:51:29.200 And I did realize that she would have been in a drunk driving accident, which is why I asked the lawyer. 0.96

03:51:40.680 Right, because Diane doesn't drink. 1.00

03:51:43.100 No. 1.00

03:51:44.280 Right.

03:51:44.700 And that's why he said he believed her when she told him that,

03:51:50.680 and that's why he sent off a blood test.

03:51:53.860 When you found out that this was an attempted fraud, what did you think?

03:51:59.160 What was your reaction? 1.00

03:52:02.000 I was wondering how I could have been so stupid, frankly. 1.00

03:52:07.040 I mean, I just so thoroughly bought into that. 0.99

03:52:10.820 and by that time it was out of my hands and i just watch all of you take over and figure it out

03:52:23.140 we're loved we're loved we did come we did come away from that feeling very loved it was so

03:52:29.120 sophisticated you know the the woman calling pretending to be diane the lawyer the court

03:52:36.300 you know multiple people involved did you ever figure out how you were chosen for this

03:52:43.740 no i i really didn't know i have no idea but then again with these scams

03:52:55.500 um i can't tell you how many times i've gotten one of these phone calls that says

03:53:05.080 Grandma, I'm in trouble.

03:53:08.340 I need help.

03:53:10.120 Oh, really?

03:53:11.820 Yes.

03:53:13.080 And it's more fun because now I just say,

03:53:17.560 is your mother proud of what you're doing?

03:53:21.100 And they always hang up on me.

03:53:24.800 So for those out there, it's Barnstable.

03:53:27.100 If they try to do it again, it's not Barnstable.

03:53:31.960 So Di and Brad are safe.

03:53:34.080 Few. No one has handed over any money. Thank God. And Steve has saved the day.

03:53:41.200 Now, Doug and I decide to have a little fun with our con man, who does not yet know he's been busted.

03:53:48.700 I called him up with Doug taping the conversation. And what happened next was six minutes of gold.

03:53:56.200 That's next.

03:53:56.920 Last summer, the coolest place in the house was in your freezer.

03:54:05.420 This year, it's time to level up.

03:54:07.660 Reliance Home Comfort has over 155,000 five-star reviews

03:54:11.600 for delivering the type of outstanding customer experience

03:54:14.600 Canadians have counted on for over 60 years.

03:54:17.800 Right now, don't pay for 12 months on a featured air conditioner or heat pump.

03:54:21.820 Call on the experts that know how to beat the heat.

03:54:24.760 Call on Reliance.

03:54:26.420 Conditions apply. See website for details.

03:54:31.100 Order up.

03:54:32.280 Thank you.

03:54:33.760 No, no, no.

03:54:36.540 Oh, come on. This is not happening.

03:54:38.940 Turn off the water.

03:54:40.420 Where's the shutoff?

03:54:41.600 The pipe. There, there.

03:54:45.880 Gosh, it's everywhere.

03:54:47.600 Are we covered for this?

03:54:49.460 Don't know? Don't worry.

03:54:51.300 A licensed TD insurance advisor can help you get the right insurance coverage to protect your business.

03:54:56.420 It's how we're making insurance more human. 0.99

03:55:02.820 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show.

03:55:04.960 All right, I want to take you through my phone call with the scammer now.

03:55:09.120 But to help me walk you through it, I brought in my pal Bill Stanton.

03:55:13.700 He's former NYPD, a private investigator, and a security expert

03:55:17.220 who helps us out sometimes on our own security from time to time.

03:55:20.560 Watch this.

03:55:21.060 So, I'm just going to play the call, okay, that I did with this guy.

03:55:26.040 once we were finally on to this.

03:55:28.200 And I would love if we could analyze it as we go.

03:55:30.920 All right, and I can pause it if necessary.

03:55:32.920 Here we go.

03:55:44.920 This is Paul.

03:55:46.060 Paul, hey, it's Megan Kelly.

03:55:47.700 So I haven't received the Bitcoin verification yet.

03:55:50.560 I was using my real name.

03:55:52.540 He knew who I was.

03:55:53.860 And I had mentioned that I was a public figure.

03:55:57.560 Didn't stop him one bit.

03:55:59.700 Didn't bat an eye.

03:56:00.580 You're not surprised at that or are you? 1.00

03:56:02.740 Well, my guess is he's not from this country. 0.99

03:56:06.700 He may be out of the country.

03:56:08.160 What?

03:56:08.380 He sounds American.

03:56:09.200 He does sound American, but I don't know that he fully knew the impact of

03:56:13.080 Megyn Kelly or what was coming.

03:56:14.860 Yeah.

03:56:15.400 He was about to be humiliated.

03:56:16.800 Exactly.

03:56:17.440 From CoinSource?

03:56:18.620 Yeah.

03:56:19.040 Is that Bitcoin, whatever that is?

03:56:21.500 Is that Bitcoin?

03:56:23.020 Yes.

03:56:23.760 It hasn't come through.

03:56:25.300 Do you have any verification from them at all?

03:56:27.920 No.

03:56:28.420 Is there another way of doing this?

03:56:30.280 Because I'm worried about them sitting there all day.

03:56:34.220 Okay.

03:56:34.960 Well, did you check your text messages?

03:56:38.420 Yeah.

03:56:38.840 Does it still say awaiting review?

03:56:41.120 Yep.

03:56:41.500 There's nothing.

03:56:42.400 Another one didn't come in.

03:56:44.100 So that's the last I have.

03:56:45.440 At this point, he's walking me through exactly how to get him the Bitcoin.

03:56:49.100 I mean, he's an expert.

03:56:50.120 As I was listening to this on the way down here, what your listeners are listening to is a master class in three-level chess.

03:57:00.820 It is a mind game that's going on, and you handle it phenomenally.

03:57:05.960 Okay, let's go.

03:57:07.140 Where are you?

03:57:08.120 Are you located at the machine?

03:57:10.320 I haven't gone down there yet because I don't have the verification.

03:57:13.980 Don't I need the verification before I can send anything?

03:57:16.000 You're going to have to get on the chat and contact them because it could be that maybe the pictures were not legible or something like that.

03:57:26.240 But if you go on the coinsource.net, you can actually get on the chat with them and ask them what's the status of your verification.

03:57:34.700 All right. I'm worried about them sitting there all day. Is there any other way of doing this?

03:57:40.860 I did contact the court and explain to them about, you know, the shutdown there.

03:57:46.700 And they were, you know, it's unconstitutional to keep them there.

03:57:50.320 So we've got enough time to get them out.

03:57:53.000 We just have to try to pay the bails to get them out.

03:57:56.000 Like, how are they?

03:57:59.120 Is there any way of like lowering the bail or getting them out just like for now?

03:58:03.020 I love what you're doing here because I call it doing the Columbo. 0.98

03:58:06.740 You're playing stupid, but you're doing it brilliantly. 0.99

03:58:10.320 Because at this point, I know. 1.00

03:58:11.280 Yeah, yes, yeah.

03:58:12.120 And you're just slowly reeling him in, and he doesn't realize.

03:58:16.180 He thinks he's the predator.

03:58:17.760 Yeah.

03:58:18.160 Meanwhile, you're putting your jaws around him.

03:58:20.140 That's exactly right.

03:58:20.800 He still thinks he's got them.

03:58:21.880 Like, how serious are these charges?

03:58:24.780 Well, they're very serious.

03:58:25.880 I mean, it's a very serious charge.

03:58:28.920 If we're not for the blood tests, we'd probably, you know, be looking at some jail time.

03:58:35.840 Did she take one already? 0.92

03:58:38.260 Yeah, I already requested it.

03:58:39.760 We're just waiting for the result.

03:58:41.580 You know, I'm pretty sure it's going to come back below the levels because that's what she, you know, she promised me that she was not drinking.

03:58:47.860 No, there is zero chance that she was drinking. 0.95

03:58:51.440 Zero.

03:58:51.960 So this is one of the weird risks he took where he based this whole alleged crime on Diane drunk driving.

03:58:59.000 And this is an area in which he didn't do his homework because she and Brad don't drink.

03:59:03.640 They just don't drink.

03:59:04.500 It's not their thing.

03:59:05.280 and he so he took a shot at it and then everybody from jackie to doug to me we were all like they

03:59:13.460 don't drink right what do you mean like he kind of but he was like yeah you know i believe her

03:59:19.620 that's why i'm gonna i'm gonna mandate the blood test well this this character is a combination

03:59:24.760 fortune teller con man and he's reading everything right so he has maybe done dozens if not hundreds

03:59:32.000 of these calls before so just like a fortune teller he's feeling it out and he needs to make

03:59:38.120 some leaps in order to advance to get to end game and like a telemarketer he has heard so many

03:59:44.900 different responses and he knows where to put like cut and paste what type of answer yes yes and

03:59:50.980 that's what you are defeating here and we'll listen as we go on as he stumbles like a mental

03:59:57.200 computer glitch, you'll hear it

03:59:59.520 as you get them. He's so clever because

04:00:01.560 he doesn't get thrown at all by

04:00:03.520 she doesn't drink. He's like, I'm on your

04:00:05.640 side. I agree. She wasn't drunk. That's why

04:00:07.520 I'm mandating blood tests. Right. I mean, that's

04:00:09.640 smooth. Once we pay the bail,

04:00:11.580 how long until they can get out?

04:00:14.460 It takes about

04:00:15.280 45 minutes to an hour for them to

04:00:17.560 be released. Okay.

04:00:19.320 And where, like, how do we get them?

04:00:25.240 Are you going to be coming down to pick them up?

04:00:27.200 We're not, but we'll find somebody there.

04:00:29.380 Like, they have a friend there who we looped in,

04:00:32.620 and he was going to try to help, but that didn't work.

04:00:35.440 But he's there, so he can get them.

04:00:41.100 He didn't answer.

04:00:47.380 Right.

04:00:47.780 Well, you see, the longer you're talking, 1.00

04:00:49.780 the more it's giving him a chance to formulate some bullshit 0.99

04:00:52.540 on what to say back to you. 0.99

04:00:54.600 He doesn't know the address of the courthouse.

04:00:56.120 And you are like a cat blocking him off like a mouse trying to get away.

04:01:03.380 And you keep putting a paw down.

04:01:04.940 Then he runs the other way.

04:01:06.080 Yeah.

04:01:06.340 And then you put a paw down here.

04:01:07.860 He tried to get out of Dodge.

04:01:09.360 And I'm like, I need the address of the jail so I can pick them up.

04:01:12.840 And he's wondering what to say.

04:01:14.260 Let me give you the address for just a second.

04:01:26.120 It's 725 Bedford.

04:01:32.200 725, all right, let me write this down.

04:01:35.460 Wait, and what's the city?

04:01:38.180 Bedford.

04:01:42.820 Okay, and what's the city?

04:01:46.740 Stanford.

04:01:48.920 Stanford, Connecticut?

04:01:50.800 Correct.

04:01:53.540 Paul, they're in Cape Cod.

04:01:56.120 you're absolutely right i'm really sorry i was confused i have another case that's in

04:02:06.040 stanford it's just been a very long day for me that was the mental glitch and this guy is as i

04:02:12.740 said dozens if not hundreds of calls before and notice how he maintains his calm right but there's

04:02:20.080 these big he doesn't hang up right there doesn't hang up because he's invested in you you are money

04:02:25.560 on the hoof to him, right?

04:02:27.720 Now, he may have 10 other calls in process lined up,

04:02:31.380 but right now, all his focus

04:02:32.840 is to get the money out of you.

04:02:34.840 And every second is a cost-benefit analysis.

04:02:38.000 You know, can I still reel this one into the boat?

04:02:41.360 Yes, right.

04:02:42.160 And I think he was either confused

04:02:44.040 because he had another potential fish

04:02:46.620 in Stanford, Connecticut,

04:02:47.680 or it was because, Stanford,

04:02:50.240 or it was because Doug was in Connecticut that day.

04:02:53.860 That was a year that we were commuting our two boys to Connecticut and our daughter was still going to school in New York.

04:02:59.500 So we would split up during the days.

04:03:01.480 And when he spoke with Doug, I think Doug said, I'm in Connecticut.

04:03:05.120 So he got confused.

04:03:06.540 There were too many cities, too many places to juggle.

04:03:08.400 He's juggling too many balls.

04:03:09.560 Yeah, exactly.

04:03:10.780 So where are they?

04:03:13.780 I gave you the address earlier.

04:03:16.980 It's in Barnstable.

04:03:18.980 He gave it to your husband.

04:03:20.620 Meanwhile, actual Cape Codders call it Barnstable.

04:03:23.860 And he's claiming that he's from there.

04:03:27.040 Yeah, right.

04:03:27.940 They don't say barn stable.

04:03:28.980 He's getting burned on multiple areas.

04:03:31.340 He fell down a little on the job here.

04:03:33.880 Just a second.

04:03:42.560 Let me see if she's still there because it could have been moved.

04:03:45.980 Yeah, it's 3195 Main Street.

04:03:49.220 3195 Main Street.

04:03:52.900 She's still there.

04:03:53.860 Okay, Main Street. So what's that town?

04:03:59.760 Barnstable.

04:04:01.360 Barnstable. Okay. And where are you?

04:04:08.000 I'm in Barnstable, but I'm not currently here. I'm in Ohio handling some family business, and I'm going to be back here on Monday.

04:04:17.600 So why he has to not be in Barnstable because he can't receive the money in cash by our friend who's ready to deliver cash to his face.

04:04:28.160 Right.

04:04:28.580 He's got to be someplace else so that we have to wire it Bitcoin.

04:04:32.480 Right.

04:04:32.720 And he adds like family business to prey upon, you know, your goodwill and to humanize him.

04:04:40.320 Right.

04:04:40.920 Like, oh, this guy's a regular guy.

04:04:42.860 It's not a confidence man.

04:04:44.280 This is legit.

04:04:45.160 You can hear him thinking.

04:04:46.420 They can hear the wheels turning live.

04:04:47.900 Yes, you can hear it grinding, right.

04:04:49.660 Right?

04:04:49.960 And you just keep throwing monkey wrench after monkey wrench.

04:04:52.300 It's great to just ask questions.

04:04:53.840 Uh-huh.

04:04:54.480 Right?

04:04:54.700 Like, that can be harder than even, like, confronting with facts.

04:04:57.520 Exactly.

04:04:58.560 Are you a sole practitioner, or what are you?

04:05:01.700 I'm a public defendant.

04:05:03.400 I work for the state bar here in Massachusetts.

04:05:06.920 In Massachusetts, okay.

04:05:08.160 Where'd you go to law school?

04:05:09.400 I'm a lawyer, too.

04:05:11.420 I went to school in New York, John Jay Law.

04:05:14.420 Oh, really?

04:05:15.300 What year did you graduate?

04:05:16.420 i'm sorry 70 73 you graduated law school in 73 you don't sound that old

04:05:25.580 oh yeah i am literally i graduated law school in 95

04:05:32.080 22 years older than i yeah i'm 87 and a half years old seriously i mean at that point that

04:05:38.260 would have made him in his mid-70s he does not sound like he's in his mid-70s and he's a public

04:05:42.680 defender in his mid 70s so why did he say that why did he say he was a 73 because in my opinion

04:05:48.720 you have his mind racing so much right that was the first number that flew out of his mind so i

04:05:55.280 think it's because he knew like he was worried i might have gone to john jay and he was like oh

04:06:00.440 that's funny i can't pick a year anywhere i don't know how old she is right right you know because

04:06:05.540 these are small law schools right right like i mean 73 jesus yeah he went big he went yeah he had

04:06:11.900 I had no idea, though. He didn't know how old I was. That's what I think.

04:06:14.820 So the other thing is, you know, $17,000 is a lot of money.

04:06:21.040 And, like, what if I don't get it back?

04:06:25.880 What do you mean? You're supposed to get it back once the case is closed or dismissed.

04:06:30.880 Once it's closed or dismissed?

04:06:33.680 Correct.

04:06:35.860 I mean, I got to be honest with you.

04:06:38.320 Like, I'm not that close with Diane.

04:06:40.360 I'm not, I'm not sure.

04:06:43.920 No problem.

04:06:46.820 You know, it's a lot of money.

04:06:50.960 That was it.

04:06:52.240 You know, on to the next call, on to the next victim.

04:06:55.640 So you don't think I hurt his feelings?

04:06:56.940 You think he was just like, cut my losses by?

04:06:58.260 I cut my, cut my losses by.

04:06:59.680 I kind of hoped I hurt him a little, you know, like, aha, I got you.

04:07:02.300 You didn't even, he didn't miss a step, right?

04:07:06.180 You became too much of an impediment to him, and it's on to the easier fish.

04:07:11.120 Think about a predator.

04:07:12.500 Wolves go after the weakest sheep, the slowest, the oldest, the ones most vulnerable.

04:07:17.560 And just to make a point, while we're laughing here, this is done in various machinations every day.

04:07:23.960 Elderly women who are lonely, you know, the Lonely Hearts Club.

04:07:27.540 I've had, through friends and family, I'd say about a baker's dozen cases where women in their 60s and 70s have sold their homes, have taken loans, sent that money, knowing them only a week. 1.00

04:07:42.920 Loneliness is a son of a bitch. 1.00

04:07:44.840 Having an open heart is a son of a bitch in this case. 1.00

04:07:48.600 So it's a combination of having street smart and cyber sense. 0.98

04:07:52.180 when these things come in there's a sense of urgency and you want to take care of your loved

04:07:57.400 one and they'll come up with a number and what they look at is your social media we've all been

04:08:03.260 guilty of it some more than others where we put everything on the effing internet right you know

04:08:09.260 and think about pictures in front of your house i could spot your address i'm not saying you know

04:08:13.820 i never do that i know that but so many of us do right so many tells the type of car so for the

04:08:20.820 predator the cyber predator they're gathering whether it's one person or a whole network of

04:08:26.840 people they'll gather that intel and like well only my family would know that well well let's

04:08:33.000 talk about that in this case because that's one of the weirdnesses jackie doug's 87 year old mother

04:08:37.740 is not on social media right nor is diane nor is brad neither one of them so this guy knew clearly

04:08:46.060 he was targeting an elderly woman.

04:08:47.540 Right.

04:08:48.160 And he at least knew her daughter's name

04:08:50.080 because he had a woman call pretending to be her 0.98

04:08:53.040 and said, mom, it's die. 0.52

04:08:54.460 Right.

04:08:54.940 So like how, I don't even know how you figure that out.

04:08:58.380 Could they have flipped it?

04:09:00.040 Could she have touted your sister-in-law, correct?

04:09:02.920 Yeah.

04:09:03.220 Could she have had her mother, you know,

04:09:06.720 online through social media?

04:09:09.180 No.

04:09:09.440 At mom's 85th.

04:09:10.180 She's not even out.

04:09:11.360 She's not online at all.

04:09:12.720 No, your sister-in-law isn't.

04:09:13.860 No.

04:09:14.680 Oh, well, you know what?

04:09:15.780 then it may be closer to home than we know you know most crimes like god forbid anything would

04:09:22.020 ever happen to this home like whether it be burglary vandalism it's not from someone across

04:09:26.560 the country it's the landscaper's cousin it's someone you know one or twice removed those are

04:09:32.920 people you gotta i'll bet him don't worry i'll bet him um because that's what's really disturbing

04:09:41.760 right they knew some facts yes about jackie just enough about diane to think it's legit they knew

04:09:48.220 diane was in cape cod right so i mean that's another thing right that not online right so

04:09:53.340 it's actually i have no idea but you're right maybe it's somebody who somehow knew the family

04:09:57.520 well that's the only way it's either well you know one or two people removed or the internet

04:10:03.300 it's been my experience or someone may have reached out you know we don't know what we don't

04:10:08.840 No, we don't know if your sister-in-law

04:10:11.660 had reached out on some service.

04:10:14.260 Or if they called Jackie earlier

04:10:16.020 under a different pretense to do info gathering.

04:10:18.700 Yes, and they gather it

04:10:19.940 and then it's just in the conveyor belt

04:10:21.980 when their time comes up,

04:10:23.380 okay, we have all this information,

04:10:25.000 they're good to go, they're in the hopper, let's go.

04:10:27.240 That's another good warning.

04:10:29.200 Like if somebody calls,

04:10:30.540 and I think most younger people know this,

04:10:32.460 but especially for our older listeners,

04:10:34.380 if somebody calls looking for information,

04:10:37.260 asking personal information about your family members,

04:10:39.860 names, anything that,

04:10:41.580 obviously people know,

04:10:42.480 don't give your social security number.

04:10:43.880 They'll ask everything, you know, these surveys.

04:10:46.180 And so like, I'll entertain some of these calls

04:10:48.620 just to see like, you know, where's this gonna go?

04:10:51.780 And they want everything.

04:10:53.200 I go, yeah, none, yeah.

04:10:54.440 Yeah.

04:10:54.740 None, yeah, effing business, you know?

04:10:56.460 Call the wrong guy.

04:10:58.540 Well, I guess that's true. 0.54

04:11:01.540 He must've gotten it from her or,

04:11:03.760 because you said maybe he's out of the country.

04:11:05.340 I just feel like he was an American,

04:11:07.020 but that doesn't mean he wasn't sitting there in India

04:11:08.680 making these calls.

04:11:10.920 I don't know if he was close to them or not,

04:11:12.780 but that I hadn't considered

04:11:13.760 that he had already done research potentially on Jackie

04:11:16.200 because she wasn't that savvy to this

04:11:18.220 prior to this whole event.

04:11:20.260 Yes.

04:11:20.660 All right, let's speak about how elaborate this was.

04:11:25.840 You know, there was a article,

04:11:27.320 I think it was the Forbes business columnist recently

04:11:29.720 who did this whole article

04:11:31.400 about how she'd been defrauded out of $85,000 cash.

04:11:34.620 She put it in a shoebox over just the course of eight hours.

04:11:38.060 This guy convinced her to do it.

04:11:39.720 And this is a financial columnist.

04:11:41.400 So, you know, relatively sophisticated, but gave up the dough.

04:11:44.840 And he too had multiple people working with him on the fraud.

04:11:48.600 This guy, I think, had at least two others.

04:11:51.200 He had a fake courthouse number.

04:11:53.100 He had hold music that he told us.

04:11:55.820 Well, that tells me it's more than a one-man band.

04:11:59.100 Like, let's just, like, as a sort of an example is this show.

04:12:03.360 you're at the top of the masthead but there's a whole infrastructure behind that beautiful face

04:12:09.240 what's going on you bring your game but you have your people your producers your bookers your

04:12:14.140 everything and to the viewer it seems so seamless but there's a lot to make it happen same things

04:12:20.540 with these confidence people they're gathering information instead of producers they may have

04:12:25.080 researchers gathering backstory instead of celebrities or politicians they're gathering it

04:12:31.140 on everyday people they could do an easy you know journeyman's uh financial assessment you know is

04:12:38.400 that house paid for do they how many what's the type of cars do they have do they have that

04:12:43.560 discretionary cash or are they alone are they desperate enough do they have family these are

04:12:49.620 all the stress points if you will that these confidence men that these teams will look at

04:12:55.560 and they use psychology they listen it happened to me and i'm in the business i was on my in a

04:13:02.100 different form i'm on my computer my computer got hacked and i was so desperate i didn't want them

04:13:07.620 getting my shit yeah so i'm on it and a little voice i i called up andy the guy we use you know 0.66

04:13:15.000 that's helped you in the past and andy's like discontinue right now i'm like but i'm gonna 0.98

04:13:20.160 lose my he goes i'm fucking telling you get off and i was that old granny yeah right about to give 0.96

04:13:27.140 away all my shit oh it's so there is no socioeconomic intelligence quotient that makes 1.00

04:13:33.420 you immune it's been my experience sometimes the smarter you are then you know you're so confident 0.99

04:13:39.720 in who you are oh this would never happen to me i would be able to disseminate the bs yes and they

04:13:44.700 hit that pay button sooner than someone from the street well we love the piece of the story that

04:13:49.460 ultimately it was the Cape Cod whaling guy who was like, I'm going by their house.

04:13:56.120 I don't know what these people are saying. And he, he figured it out. He's the hero of the story.

04:14:01.340 10 for that. Okay. So what about the targeting of the elderly? Because

04:14:05.020 that does seem to be a theme in a lot of these. Yes. Yes. What they'll do again,

04:14:10.140 they go on people's nature or that they could lose their home.

04:14:14.840 But how do they find out who's elderly and how to call them?

04:14:17.920 Like, do they get a sponsorship from the AARP or one of those magazines not to bash the AARP?

04:14:22.680 But I'm just saying, like, is there a way of getting people's numbers who are old?

04:14:27.840 Yeah, well, you can go.

04:14:29.580 There are services where you can get demographics of people.

04:14:34.140 So, like, my house was up for sale, like you, mass exodus out of New York.

04:14:39.660 And I had all these people.

04:14:41.340 Like, how the F do you know?

04:14:42.600 How do you have my cell number?

04:14:43.720 number one, right? And how do you know my house is for sale? Oh, we'll pay cash. Oh, can I show

04:14:49.240 your house? Because there are services that you pay into and you get certain demographics. So for

04:14:55.320 me, I'm selling my house. There are elderly groups. If she ever signed on to any AARP or some type of 1.00

04:15:03.140 association, those lots of, you know, the intelligence gathering of who you are, what you

04:15:10.200 are what demographic you are the same way advertisers buy that voters like the campaign yes

04:15:15.960 the campaigns are getting all that information right now the same way uh you know certain

04:15:20.300 demographics want that information for sales they get it for marks to mark you as a victim

04:15:26.120 they can find out about us and it's scary and it's the basic psychology you see when we're in

04:15:31.480 our home you're an old elderly elderly lady you may be widowed you're all alone and your primary

04:15:36.440 thing is to go to the market, to get that sale and come home. You're hit out of the blue with a

04:15:43.480 member of your family that's in distress and you could hit that button and you're going to be

04:15:48.560 walked through it to get them out of trouble. That's what you live for. And they know that.

04:15:53.800 There are so many people who are in this exact position right now. And it's like,

04:15:57.640 I think my audience is in general, they're a lot younger than 87. So I urge everybody,

04:16:03.500 speak to your parent speak to your great aunt speak to anybody who's in this age group and

04:16:08.180 speak to your friends too because it's not just the elderly and let them know that this this is

04:16:13.140 out there whether it's whether this it's this particular one whether it's they hack into your

04:16:19.040 computer whether you're on one of those dating sites they go to the basic emotion and need and

04:16:25.180 insecurity of people and just realize take that breath take a step back because nothing is unless

04:16:32.480 Unless you're in a car crash where you have to hit that brake, you know, hit the brake in your mind, hit that cyber brake, hit that telephone brake and ask questions and say, give me a number.

04:16:42.860 Let me get back to you.

04:16:44.100 It can wait 10 minutes and that could save you a whole bunch of money, a whole bunch.

04:16:47.740 And I will say in that fraud that I mentioned that the business reporter wrote up about that happened to her and in this attempted fraud of us, one of the things that she didn't do and that we didn't do and should have done was to do an independent Google search of the number of the courthouse or in her case.

04:17:06.360 I don't remember that it was like that.

04:17:07.480 She said they said she was getting investigated by the federal government.

04:17:11.240 But whoever they say is the third party. 0.99

04:17:14.900 Right.

04:17:15.520 Just hang up and do a Google search.

04:17:17.520 don't call their number call you find out the number right you make an independent call to see

04:17:22.460 if this is real now and get the fraudsters number so you can then call and go one step further

04:17:26.560 because there are apps i can call you and it looks like it's coming from doug's number

04:17:31.880 yeah that technology exists out there that's rudimentary what yes i can call you right now

04:17:38.760 and it would ring doug's number and you would answer whoa so there are different levels to this

04:17:45.200 And, you know, shame.

04:17:46.500 But if I'm dialing out, I mean, like, that's the empowerment is if you are dialing out on your phone to the Barnstable Courthouse.

04:17:53.620 Right, right.

04:17:54.340 Like, I had Amazon.

04:17:55.600 I had an Amazon scam.

04:17:57.880 And it was online.

04:17:58.700 It came over a text, right?

04:18:00.620 You know, did you charge this on Amazon?

04:18:03.840 Click here. 1.00

04:18:05.800 Fuck that. 1.00

04:18:06.780 I got on the phone with Amazon direct, you know. 1.00

04:18:09.900 And I'm like, is this what you do?

04:18:11.420 They go, absolutely not.

04:18:12.880 I go, is this a thing?

04:18:14.600 They go, that's a thing.

04:18:16.200 Don't you get, I get attempted frauds at me every day via email.

04:18:19.440 Like on this, it's like, I usually just forward them to Abby and she deals with it.

04:18:23.980 Or like the scams and she puts these major blockers on my phone.

04:18:27.580 But it's amazing because most people don't have an Abby and most people haven't had this

04:18:32.860 happen to them and they're not living on guard.

04:18:34.840 They're actually still trusting, loving people.

04:18:36.800 Right. 1.00

04:18:37.180 Unlike us cynical bastards. 0.99

04:18:38.380 and even as cynical as we are we always got taken in let me tell you it it listen 0.98

04:18:45.600 essentially we're good people we care about people but f that like i had a lady i was in

04:18:52.440 midtown this was a number of years ago uh middle-aged well-dressed woman and she hit me with 0.99

04:18:58.520 the gasoline oh my car and i was fascinated that this woman was well-dressed well-spoken 0.94

04:19:07.500 And she's hitting me up.

04:19:09.080 I said, I'll walk you to your car right now.

04:19:11.140 Oh, I really get. 0.93

04:19:11.860 And then she just walked away.

04:19:13.380 So they pray, you know, upon your good nature.

04:19:16.800 And again, you know, many people don't, haven't been raised from the streets, you know, but

04:19:22.520 it's incumbent to have those street smarts and bad guys don't necessarily dress up like

04:19:28.280 in the old Batman bad guy t-shirt.

04:19:30.440 Now it's on the internet and the cyber world is a whole nother animal.

04:19:34.720 and just remember always press the brakes and question question question you're not surprised

04:19:39.280 the cops weren't interested that's how they get away with it though it's it's low level it's low

04:19:45.360 on their priority list you know uh many police departments aren't sophisticated in tracking this

04:19:51.120 down it's more an fbi issue yeah actually and this crossed state lines right you know that's why it's

04:19:57.040 more of an fbi issue and we know you know they have their own problems i had all my evidence i

04:20:02.300 had his number. I had the court number. Let me tell you something. You are turning out. This is,

04:20:08.320 this was actually your first undercover. We've done another undercover. We've done an undercover

04:20:12.640 since then. You are, you are proving to be quite, you know, I thought my initials were BS. You're

04:20:16.880 getting very good at this, Megan Kelly. You're getting a little bit too good. I do love, I mean,

04:20:21.760 like the elderly, I love my Matlock. I love my Jessica, the murder she wrote. I aspire to great

04:20:27.400 things. Bill Stanton, thank you. 10-4. Thank you for having me. Thanks to my family, Doug,

04:20:33.640 Di, and Brad, my mother-in-law, Jackie. Thanks to Steve for helping us bring this story to you.

04:20:38.980 I mean, can you believe this? Like, isn't that a nuts story? It's cray-cray. And honestly,

04:20:44.980 Doug and I have had so many conversations about it. I remember we had dinner with all these

04:20:48.660 friends. It was still the COVID lockdowns and we sneaked a dinner, not sorry to tell you,

04:20:53.600 at our apartment because crazy Andrew Cuomo was still trying to tell us we weren't allowed to do

04:20:57.520 that kind of thing. And we told our friends this story that night and everyone was riveted, right?

04:21:02.780 Because no one could believe this crap. And I know what you're thinking. As soon as you hear 0.99

04:21:07.060 crypto, you're like, wait a minute. And we too were like, what? But it was just the COVID weirdness,

04:21:14.180 the fact that we had spoken with the court, we thought ourselves, and the fact that we hadn't

04:21:22.040 yet even thought to question Jackie's telling us

04:21:25.980 she had spoken with Diane herself

04:21:28.240 and that she was really in trouble.

04:21:30.640 Like that didn't even enter our minds

04:21:32.960 that that piece of the story might not be true.

04:21:36.060 So anyway, words of caution in this story for everyone.

04:21:41.500 And honestly, you need to know this, right?

04:21:43.600 Because what if this happened to your mom or you?

04:21:48.080 And now you'll know.

04:21:49.480 If we hadn't told this story, you might not know.

04:21:52.440 Maybe you would be hoodwinked.

04:21:53.640 I don't know.

04:21:54.420 It can happen.

04:21:55.260 Trust me.

04:21:56.680 So we decided to tell you the story, even though we knew you might mock us a little,

04:22:00.620 because we want to help others.

04:22:02.300 And we learned a lot, too, ourselves.

04:22:04.160 I think all of us did.

04:22:05.240 Hope all of you learned something from today's show and from Fraud Week all week.

04:22:11.320 Because sadly, there are fraudsters out there working hard every day to steal your money

04:22:16.880 or something precious.

04:22:18.200 and most of these never see the light of day, right?

04:22:20.940 They just happen privately

04:22:21.880 because people are too embarrassed to talk about it or scared.

04:22:25.060 Yeah, they're humiliated and I get it,

04:22:27.180 but there's no reason to be humiliated. 0.99

04:22:28.460 Like if you get defrauded by one of these losers 0.96

04:22:32.300 or almost defrauded in our case, what does it say about you? 0.78

04:22:35.020 It says you believe in human nature, you believe in others,

04:22:38.320 you probably have a kind heart, you're probably a trusting soul.

04:22:42.000 Those are not bad things, right?

04:22:43.980 But slightly jaded, trusting soul, but slightly jaded,

04:22:47.520 I think that's what we're going for.

04:22:49.280 So that's why we shared

04:22:50.400 and that's why we hope everybody listens and shares

04:22:53.380 and talks about these kinds of things more and more

04:22:55.940 so we can help each other.

04:22:57.180 All right, I'd love to hear from all of you.

04:22:58.960 Do you have a fraud story?

04:23:00.420 Have you been inspired or helped by our fraud week?

04:23:05.460 Email me at megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.

04:23:10.040 I'll definitely be reading.

04:23:11.000 We do read the emails.

04:23:12.400 I see them every week and I love going through them.

04:23:14.580 I read them on Mondays.

04:23:15.480 We get them collected from the week before.

04:23:17.520 And there's nothing quite like hearing from all of you.

04:23:19.680 So, would love for you to email me.

04:23:23.180 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

04:23:25.080 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

04:23:47.520 Canadians have counted on for over 60 years.

04:23:50.700 Right now, don't pay for 12 months on a featured air conditioner or heat pump.

04:23:55.280 Call on the experts that know how to beat the heat.

04:23:57.820 Call our reliance.

04:23:59.640 Conditions apply. See website for details.

04:24:02.120 You customize your coffee order, your playlists, your gym routine.

04:24:05.900 And now, with the TD Active Trader platform, you can customize your trading too.

04:24:10.380 Because no one trades quite like you.

04:24:12.840 Live. Breathe. Trade.

04:24:14.480 TD. Ready for you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 26, 2026

Luigi Mangione, NXIVM Cult, and Megyn's Own Family Fraud Story - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript