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Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Trust Me is a weekly interview podcast about cults, extreme belief, and the fine line between devotion and delusion—told through firsthand accounts from the people who lived it. Hosted by two women who’ve been in cults themselves, Lola Blanc and Meagan Elizabeth, the show features survivors from groups like Heaven’s Gate, the Manson Family, NXIVM, OneTaste and more–sharing personal stories of how they got in, how they got out, and everything in between.

Each week, they invite these guests alongside experts who can dive deep into seductive leaders, the darker aspects of organized religion, and the subtler shades of groupthink and the psychology of influence. Trust Me explores it all with unfiltered honesty, dark humor, and a lot of heart. This isn’t a sensationalized deep dive into cults—it’s a compassionate, first-person exploration of what it means to believe, to belong, and to break free. At the end of the day, wanting to believe in something bigger than yourself is one of the most human instincts there is.

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

This week is part 1 with advocate and therapist Renee Spencer, whose daughter was recruited into the Jesus Christians: a group commonly referred to as the “kidney cult” for their practice of encouraging members to donate their kidneys to strangers. Renee shares about her and her daughter Ellicia’s close relationship, how Ellicia suddenly stopped contacting Renee, and why Renee tried to be accepting of her daughter’s choices–even while slowly learning that Ellicia had joined a mysterious group of traveling Christians and was being isolated from her former life.
 
She explains how Ellicia was initially recruited through YouTube, how Ellicia told Renee she was engaged to someone from the group after just a couple of months, and the minimal contact Renee was allowed when she visited. They discuss what she learned about Ellicia’s new husband Joseph, the whipping “trials” the group’s leader had organized to teach Joseph’s family a lesson, and how Renee discovered that her daughter’s communication had been far more controlled than she even realized.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renee Spencer, Part 1 - When Your Daughter Joins the “Kidney Cult”

We’re back with twins Larena and Elyse Wynn, also known as Mothermary. In part 2 this week they’ll talk about how Elyse got fed up with being obsessive about sin all the time, which led her to hitch a ride out of Idaho and into Salt Lake City. Living with former Mormons, she explains how that’s where her worldview began to crack–especially after she attended Pride for the first time.
 
Meanwhile, Larena talks about how her marriage–and her time in the church–ended, and the girls will share how they began their journeys working as professional dominatrixes. They discuss the importance of boundaries and communication, the parallels and differences between power dynamics in BDSM and religion, and whether someone in a religion that insists they be submissive can truly enter the mindset called “sub space.”
 
Plus, all about their band, and what their music means to them.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Larena & Elyse Wynn, Part 2 - Leaving Mormonism, Becoming Dominatrixes, and Reclaiming Power with BDSM

This week is part 1 with musicians, identical twins, and former Mormons turned dominatrixes Larena and Elyse Wynn, also known by their band name Mothermary. The girls share what it was like being raised in the LDS church, and how “Montana Mormons” may have had a more fear-based culture than Mormons in other parts of the country. They’ll talk about going to BYU Idaho, and how after having sex with her boyfriend—one of the worst sins you could commit in the church—Larena was told by her bishop that she needed to marry her boyfriend in order to not get kicked out of college.
 
Elyse describes having a similar experience in high school, and how both were told by their bishop to read a book called The Miracle of Forgiveness in order to repent, which basically told them that all the things that make you human are wrong. Elyse explains how she became obsessed with not sinning, why it made her so depressed she couldn’t eat, and how she realized she needed to get out of there.
 
In part two next week, Larena tells the story of how she got out of her marriage, and how they both came to work as dominatrixes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Larena & Elyse Wynn - Montana Mormons, Sex at BYU, and the “Miracle" of Forgiveness

This week’s guest is psychology researcher and lecturer Dr. John Hunter, joining the show to talk about intensive self-help seminars–known as “large group awareness trainings,” or LGATs–and the emotions they produce. He shares about his personal experience with bipolar disorder and hypomania, and how the LGAT his employer sent him to seemed to induce a state of hypomania in its attendees.
 
John explains his dopamine hypothesis, why these trainings feel so euphoric at the end (and how rarely people tend to genuinely transform in the long-term), and how some folks have even entered prolonged manic states after attending an LGAT. But also, as always: how it’s not completely black and white.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Hunter - Manufacturing Mania in Self-Help Seminars

This week, the girls are joined by Laci Mosley, comedian, actress, and host of the Scam Goddess podcast and TV show (and author of Scam Goddess the book), to talk about the many types of frauds that are out there, from romance scams to financial fraud to Munchausen by proxy. She talks about what makes us susceptible to scams, and how much overlap there is between the way that scams and cults operate.
 
Laci shares about the time she got scammed by a psychic in an airport, how even the most smart, successful people get swindled, and the lessons we can all take from scammers to be a little scammier–but like in a good way.
 
SOURCES
 
Scam Goddess

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Laci Mosley – Scams vs. Cults, and the Many Forms of Fraud

This week, Meagan and Lola sit down with Michelle McPhee, investigative reporter and host of podcast Kingdom of Fraud, to discuss how Jacob Kingston, a fundamentalist Mormon from the secretive polygamist sect known as the Kingston clan, or the “Order,” teamed up with a shadowy Armenian tycoon nicknamed “the Lion” to commit one of the largest fraud schemes in U.S. history.
 
She’ll explain how Jacob’s drive to prove himself as one of over 100 siblings within the insular Kingston hierarchy got him in over his head with Levon Termendzhyan, his unlikely partner in the massive scheme they embarked on: it involved renewable fuel tax credits, international money laundering, powerful political connections, and billions of dollars. Plus, how they finally got caught–with the help of a couple of Trust Me’s previous guests.
 
SOURCES
 
Kingdom of Fraud

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Michele McPhee – The Polygamist, the Criminal, and Their Multibillion-Dollar Scam

This week is part 2 with Anke Richter, journalist, author of Cult Trip, former member of Tantric group ISTA, and founder and director of New Zealand’s cult conference DeCult. In part 2 with Anke, she explains how the founder of International School of Temple Arts had constructed a sort of harem culture and was sleeping with all the women, where the line is between normal dating in a community vs. coercion, and how her journalistic investigation into a different tantra group while still actively in this one finally set off her alarm bells.

They discuss what’s positive about the tantric world, how the flip side of sex-positive groups can be a pressure to act sex positive when you don’t actually FEEL sex positive, and why she started cult conference Decult.
 
SOURCES
 
Cult Trip
 
DECULT

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anke Richter, Part 2 - Harem Culture, Leaving ISTA, and DeCult

Today is part 1 with Anke Richter, journalist, author of Cult Trip, former member of Tantric group International School of Temple Arts, and founder and director of New Zealand’s cult conference DeCult. In this week’s episode she shares how she began as a journalist investigating cults, but when she went to a tantric sex festival, she had a peak experience with ecstatic dancing that made her never want to go back to her old way of life.
 
She’ll talk about doing her first training in tantric pleasure, which got her deeper into ISTA and the idea of tantric polarity and exploring her feminine energy that she’d felt she’d been missing, and how the intensity and the highs she felt in these communities made real life seem boring. Plus, how there often aren’t a lot of sexual communities to choose from in general, which can create room for the sketchier ones to flourish.
 
SOURCES
 
Cult Trip
 
DECULT 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anke Richter, Part 1 - Ecstatic Dancing, Tantric Sex, and Joining ISTA

This week is part two with Sophie Fergi, former child influencer featured in the Netflix docuseries Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing. In this episode, she shares what happened after she and her mom moved in with Piper Rockelle and Piper's mom Tiffany, how Tiffany's explosive rage became impossible to ignore, and what it was like filming long, highly controlled days--and then spending their nights cleaning up after more than 70 cats.
 
Sophie also reveals how Tiffany manufactured conflict between the other kids' parents, how her inappropriate behavior escalated through her bizarre animal characters, and why Tiffany secretly sent photos and inappropriate personal belongings to a fan named "Megan"—who was later revealed to be an adult man. Sophie discusses the breaking point that led her to leave, what it was like to be completely shunned by the Squad after she left, and the advocacy work she's been doing to protect other kidfluencers.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sophie Fergi, Part 2 - Living with Piper, Constant Control, and Being Shunned by the Squad

This week is part one with Sophie Fergi, former child influencer who told her story in the Netflix docuseries Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing. In this episode, she explains how she first met YouTube kidfluencer Piper Rockelle, and how Piper’s mom Tiffany formed the “Squad,” a group of children making content together for their YouTube channels.
 
Sophie will share what it was like to film the videos, which included fake challenges, fake crushes and relationships, and carefully curated drama that blurred the line between reality and performance, and how she began to see red flags with Tiffany, who created characters - based on family animals - which she used to speak inappropriately to the kids.
 
Next week, she’ll talk about moving in with Tiffany and Piper, and how everything began to escalate.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sophie Fergi, Part 1 - Kidfluencing, Joining the Squad, and the Dark Side of YouTube

Once called “the miracle on the beach,” Synanon began in the 1960s as an experimental rehab facility in Santa Monica, California with a radical claim: It could cure heroin addiction. Before long, it would make an even bolder claim: It could cure any of your problems. All you had to do was move in. What started in a house on the beach, soon spread to compounds across the country. The man who made the miracle happen, Charles E. Dederich, aka “Chuck,” would be the one to destroy it all, along with the lives of many of his followers and millions of dollars in assets. The Sunshine Place tells the mind-blowing, true-story of Synanon - one of America’s most cutting edge social experiments, turned into one of its most dangerous and violent cults - as it’s never been told before: by the people who lived it. Executive Produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Emily Barclay Ford for Team Downey and C13Originals, together with Josh McLaughlin for Wink Pictures and written, produced, and directed by Peabody-nominated C13Originals, a Cadence13 Studio.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome To The Sunshine Place

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