Gerri Florence (00:06.764)
You've been waiting a while. Sorry.
Gerri Florence (00:13.196)
I am very aware, lots of text messages asking me to start watching cult documentaries. And I'll be honest, I wasn't super into them before we got together here, but I can see the appeal now that I've watched five different cult documentaries in the last month. Mia, thank you.
Gerri Florence (00:39.788)
Right. I mean I think your love of marketing and is definitely underlying some of this 'cause some of the greatest cults in the world were all about good marketing.
Gerri Florence (00:52.204)
Sor you don't think so?
Gerri Florence (00:57.146)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (01:32.492)
Well, it's the extreme version of that, right? It's you take those kind of why people need to purchase things or why they need to belong or what it may be and magnify it so that it becomes that obsessive level. I'll be really interested to talk about you know, th those fine lines between what's a normal level of behavior versus the extreme.
Gerri Florence (02:30.03)
Correct. Whatever your style is, whatever your flavor of cult is, you're you are welcome here.
Gerri Florence (02:59.916)
What does that say about us? That is hilarious.
Gerri Florence (03:07.852)
Well, I mean, I know you'll have some good merch, Mia, and I just couldn't help myself.
Gerri Florence (03:36.216)
No, it's cute. It's the beginning of much merch and I our life, I think. It's all it's all for for research now and
Gerri Florence (03:47.47)
The dream.
Gerri Florence (03:52.95)
Everyone. You live in cans, you need sun protection, may ya?
Gerri Florence (04:03.638)
Gonna bend the beak a little bit. Yeah.
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (04:11.342)
I think it it's stunning.
Gerri Florence (04:16.408)
Cute. Okay. Sorry guys, back to cults.
Gerri Florence (04:28.456)
Watching these documentaries, I worry that I could easily fall into occult me. I'm not gonna lie. It is well, I'm an extroverted extrovert, which we've talked about, and love being around people. I feel like I get a a lot of energy from the energy of others. And for me, the most appealing factor about any of these groups, I mean, there was lots of unappealing factors, is that they're just this real sense of togetherness.
all of the time. and so I worry that if I stumble up upon the right group for me and they kind of create that sense of you're really special and you belong here and you've found your people, that I could get sucked straight in there.
Gerri Florence (05:32.11)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (06:07.326)
And and that's it's the soft intro as well for some people where things necessarily weren't red flags at the beginning and then those concerns grow and grow, but they choose to ignore them. Should we talk about what cult documentary we have watched in the lead up today so that listeners can know what shows that we have we're gonna explore?
Gerri Florence (07:11.65)
Yes, it was definitely the one that seemed to start off with the most idealist viewpoints. And, you know, we talked about whether or not we would never fall for such a thing. But how often have you and I had discussions about how much we would love to live in a commune? Like why? What are the reasons that you and I would just think that we need to get a piece of land, go there and live in a commune?
Gerri Florence (08:33.326)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (08:49.688)
My point.
Gerri Florence (09:10.062)
Infinitely easier. Make that make sense. And if it could be that you pick up my two kids and take them to soccer practice with yours while I stay home and cook dinner, then you get back from soccer practice and we all eat. It's like we want to be able to work because we love our jobs. We want to be able to be good c parents who are really connected with our kids. We want to have strong relationships and good friendships.
But how we're doing life doesn't allow for all those things to prosper. We kind of have to choose your lane. Where if you had that type of support and we could all get home and up, stay at home and cook dinner in the quiet while you took the kids to sport and we come home and have a sit-down meal and time together, you're just gonna be so much more present, which is again why that I life of the commune and the specifically the one in devotion does look so appealing from the outset.
Gerri Florence (10:35.074)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (11:30.252)
Yeah. So I could I could like that lifestyle, but I don't want the religious overtones. So
Yeah.
That's one. And I think that is such a difference between devotion and even the polygamist cults that we looked at and some of the other cults is that these ones are having children born into them, which feels very different to me than as a 20-something plus adult choosing to join a group of people for various reasons. It's this
The kids that are being born into these cults do not have a choice and for me that really crosses a line.
Gerri Florence (12:40.206)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Gerri Florence (12:54.102)
It's really hard to find the redeeming quality in those cults for me.
Gerri Florence (13:05.294)
Why can't we st I think it is trying to understand that love, that human behavior you talked about at the start of our of our episode? Why did they choose to stay? Once they kind of are witnessing what's going on, like even some of the young ones who are born into it and understand it, but those that join as adults, because there are some in the polygamous cult that joined much later in life, like what what
is the tipping point that would have made them leave. Like I just can't wrap my brain around it.
Gerri Florence (13:51.736)
Extreme evil. Mm. And I don't know if we got the answers necessarily.
Gerri Florence (14:08.056)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (14:20.226)
Mm. Yeah.
Gerri Florence (14:31.532)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Gerri Florence (15:24.366)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, well, I mean, i interesting again, like I've gotten a bit of a a sook in terms of letting things go once I watch things that I find particularly difficult or are harsh. So I don't spend a lot of time dabbling in the dark. I like my T V and movies to be escapism. But interesting for me is that I used to be a kid who went to Bible camp and in Canada, in North America.
So for me, I can s really see how that is the beginnings of that type of religious extremism. Like we our parents would drop us off. We were very young, like I was in grade, I don't know, six or seven. And every morning you'd gather in the chapel and they'd have you up singing these the same kind of indoctrinating songs over and over again. And I remember near the end of camp,
when you decide whether you were going to be saved or not, you know, by Jesus. And yeah, wish you could see me his face. And everybody would take a little piece of wood and stand around the fire and talk about the story of when they were saved or when they felt they were saved by by Jesus. And people would be crying and sobbing and having these very emotional experiences. And then you would throw your piece of wood into the fire to become, you know, part of the the Christian community.
and I was young. I did all the things. I wrote my devotions every night. And I mean, I couldn't be further from a religious person now in my life, but yeah, yeah, such an interesting experience to have had. So when I was watching these cult documentaries, I could have I could easily see people who I know who stayed in the church and continued to go to Bible camp and things like that to become so so deeply ingrained that it just
There is no other option because their identities are formed so young with those beliefs.
Gerri Florence (19:18.958)
Why did they make them dress alike?
Gerri Florence (20:06.19)
then it also with that takes away your another element of your free will and choice.
Gerri Florence (20:22.067)
that's gonna be Yes, Christian Hopeful. Who is from Australia, who was Australian originally. I I did I did notice that. Me only the real freaks were up there. Hey. Joking, I'm joking. No one from Cans come after me.
Yeah.
Love cans. I do. I love cans.
Gerri Florence (21:17.678)
I mean, we don't know, but my gut always says it's there from the beginning. And then you kind of create the perfect you find the perfect world in which you can be abusive and have the cover to to not be caught, so to speak.
Gerri Florence (21:59.18)
Gerri Florence (22:42.84)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (22:56.62)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, there's from all the cult leaders that we looked at across the multiple shows we watched, extreme narcissism runs across across the board. And I I guess I I could really connect with when I watched them the appeal to the lifestyle in some ways, but I didn't really see the appeal of the cult leaders themselves. Now
I didn't watch Wild Wild Country, but you did. Was that cult leader a different variety to like Warren Jeffs? Like I just he gave me the ick from the get go.
Gerri Florence (24:13.528)
You are you fact checking yourself? Mid mid episode.
Gerri Florence (24:24.398)
Also it was in in America. A lot of the cults we watched were in America.
Gerri Florence (24:41.122)
There's online cults.
Gerri Florence (24:54.83)
Okay.
Gerri Florence (25:32.974)
Okay. So he wasn't he didn't seem nerf as narcissistic by nature as Sam from the Fundamentalist one or Warren Jeffs or even Keith Rayner.
Gerri Florence (25:49.784)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (25:59.244)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (26:18.924)
Well, he's a prophet. He is a direct even though Sam, what's his last name? So is it the B in Trust Me the False Prophet, he just wakes up and says, Warren Jeff spoke me and he wants me to be the next prophet. And they're going, Okay. And that's where it's like some we watch this from our safety of our home, as we said, and we think, God, they're stupid. Like, how could they buy that? Right. But a lot of these documentaries
showed us that they were really intelligent people, journalists and well read. We look at even Julia from she was in Trust Me the False Prophet. She was the one, the insider that kind of helped the Christine and them helped them escape. She was so well spoken and so intelligent. And yes, eventually kind of realized well she could no longer stay sound about what was happening to her children.
But it wasn't a lack of intelligence while these people come and join and stay in these cults. They're not preying on people who who are unable to make good decisions for themselves. They're using these really powerful psychological tactics to draw them in, or they're raising them from birth in this way that they can't really escape.
Gerri Florence (27:43.49)
Bateman, thank you.
Mm.
Gerri Florence (28:04.162)
Yes. Yes.
Gerri Florence (28:38.434)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (28:50.552)
Well a polygamist like many wives have sex with many as many women as you can.
Gerri Florence (29:44.558)
He's letting them have sex.
Gerri Florence (29:54.306)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I think of all the shows we watched, the polygamous cults, the false prophet, and keep sweet are the two that I found most unrelatable for me. Found the hardest path in into those. which is interesting because they also have the most number of children. So they don't need a lot of outsiders coming in because they are
Literally breeding the cult from from within.
Gerri Florence (30:29.729)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (30:56.898)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (31:04.408)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (31:32.246)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (31:45.526)
That idea of women being complicit in their own abuse in the in the abuse of the children is a really hard, hard pill to swallow. And that is really what inspired the Handmaid's Tale, which is a fictionalized version of a kind of religious society and cult. But when you're unpacking all that, how do you how do you make women
complicit in their own abuse and degradation and perilousness in the film, but besides making them feel like they are are nothing without the men in their life.
Yeah. It doesn't work. Well, I just have you know, and when we talk about I don't think the tried wife thing is, you know, as direct a comparison, but it does really come down to making sure that women don't see themselves having value outside of wife and mother. And these children who have who they believe have been, you know, abducted by child services, they too want to come back because it's all they.
all they know. And I I have a hard time forgiving characters like Naomi, who or Gnomes, as they call her in the show, who is very complicit in the abuse of minor children. She takes part in sexual activity with multiple children involved in that. And yes, she gets out and learns the air of her ways, but I don't know, I just find it a really hard
hard position to kind of look upon that with any sense of forgiveness or or understanding.
Gerri Florence (34:04.194)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (34:38.484)
Better. Yeah.
Gerri Florence (35:05.26)
Interesting.
Gerri Florence (35:51.318)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (36:03.05)
Yes, and the those cults, devotion as well as the FDLR ones, are quite geographically removed from society. They're kind of put outside, where that's very different in seduced, which we haven't got to talk about yet, the the Nexium cult. can we just chat about that for a few minutes? Because this I felt like was such a whole different beast 'cause there wasn't a religious
aspect to it. There was an ideology to it, but not not necessarily a religious one.
Gerri Florence (36:58.582)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Gerri Florence (37:26.424)
Yeah, c also called like some
Gerri Florence (37:32.13)
I was I thought it was really well done. I do I think it did a good job of showing the but the pros or the good bits. Where some of the other ones we watched, it was like all this awful stuff. Like, why would you be there? Where I feel like Sadoche really did a good job, especially at the beginning of showing how wonderful this group was from the outside looking in. And I mean, I'm maybe I'm a self optimization junkie, but
But seduced in the Nexiome cult is a r a lot around self-development and becoming the best version of yourself. the in the religious cults, you have this fear of God and damnation and going to hell that is part of the reason that people don't leave, right? If you leave, you are potentially damning yourself to hell. Whereas in this seduced, which is as we said, a corporate business start us.
corporate business structure. People paid tens of thousands of dollars to be in this community. But by doing so, it wasn't that they were going to be closer to a higher power, but they were going to become the the best, most optimized version of themselves. And I thought that was such a a unique view.
Gerri Florence (39:11.372)
Yeah. And the number of famous people connected in this group I thought was was really interesting. And that they weren't necessarily geographically isolated. They were kind of mixed within the city. They were in different cities. But the the levels of control were so so extreme, it absolutely blew my mind. But I thought at the beginning I
For us to rock up to go to a one-day conference looking at how to, what was it like the Nancy was talking about how to speak with confidence and how to communicate well. Like that's all really normal reasons that we all kind of get together. and then it's this became this kind of MLM style pyramid scheme where you paid more and then you recruited people and then they you got paid based on what they recruited.
But the ability to then like get hooked these people in and then just break down the psyche was and ha and the ways in which they did that, starting with language, right? There was so much about language in this show. People had titles. The cult leader, Keith Re Reinhard, is my saying correctly, wanted his com community members to call him Vanguard. Right?
He he gave me gave me the ick. but it was just it's such a a brilliant look at like how do you build community, right? You give people a shared purpose, you give them a shared language, you make them feel like they have a place where they will always belong, you make them feel like they're special. So, Mia, what is the tipping point? At what point does a community like that tip over into a cult?
Gerri Florence (41:32.182)
Mm-hmm. Yes. They're they're the really obvious ones, but what are the like what are the moments where it's too late now to get out? You could have maybe escaped earlier and but now it's and I guess the idea is like, can you leave this community without punishment or without losing something? Right. And what you lose might
be simple enough as as other community members. Like you you're involved in a community and you love the people you're in there with, but you don't necessarily want to buy into all of it. But if it's it's an all or nothing kind of kind of mentality. So yeah, you might have free will in terms of you can turn around and walk away, but this is all the stuff that you are losing in doing that.
Gerri Florence (42:45.261)
I see it.
Gerri Florence (43:20.002)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (43:33.806)
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that's the kind of stuff that needs to be really clearly call called out, I suppose, i in that space, which you you're definitely known for doing, Mia in the online marketing space. But I can we can we develop communities that have all those positive aspects and not
fall into the negative ones. Is there a cult we have we haven't studied a cult that was led by a woman yet?
Gerri Florence (44:21.262)
Mm-hmm.
Gerri Florence (44:30.925)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (44:35.683)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (44:50.773)
Yeah.
Gerri Florence (44:56.3)
Yes. Yes. And I think it needs to be said that there are examples of awful things and child abuse and whatnot in regular everyday society as well. But it just seems to be in the cult s scene, it's just exponentially greater abuse that happens than in, I guess, representative in in mainstream culture and s and society.
So if you are wanting to create, I think community is really important. You and I both, as we said, we both love being part of communities. But I think it's really good to kind of understand that there is a bit of a a slippery slope. And it's not just those people in that country far away where this is happening. There are, as you said, cults in in every aspect. And I think from a teaching perspective, over the last number of years, where we have the that
creation of the Andrew Tate kind of phenomenon, a real online cult that exists that's impacting young boys in and young girls as a result in Australian society still today. And they are looking at that as the same driving factors that create cults in America and cult in New Zealand, which is male loneliness and lack of connection and looking for a sense of belonging.
That's the same driving factors, it's just a whole different ide ideological viewpoint that's attracting these young boys.
Gerri Florence (46:40.899)
Yes.
Gerri Florence (46:55.286)
Yeah. Yeah.
Gerri Florence (47:30.935)
Yes.
Gerri Florence (47:37.644)
Yeah, that's terrifying.
Gerri Florence (48:02.123)
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, anything we I wanna wrap up with?
Gerri Florence (48:14.23)
Are we watching next?
Gerri Florence (48:36.939)
Absolutely.
Gerri Florence (48:45.75)
Lovely and get talk about all the different romantic leads. 'Cause I think that that is I mean, I won't talk about it too much now, but I would froth the idea of looking over at Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte.
