Trust me.

Do you trust me?

Right?

Ever lead you a story?

Trust?

This is the truth, the only truth.

If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't welcome to trust me.

The podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two squirrels.

I've actually experienced it.

I'm Lola Plong and I'm Megan Elizabeth, and today our guest is researcher Tim's squirrel.

We're going to talk to him about in cells and man stuff.

He is going to tell us about the taxonomy of the manosphere, the differences between in cells and red pill, and lots more terms.

I didn't know how.

Some of these subcultures promote improving yourself and others promote rotting and giving up, but all promote misogyny and harmful, often dangerous ideas.

We'll discuss why these cultures are also bad for the people and them, often leading to risky behavior and get rich quick schemes, and what to do if someone you know is stuck in the manosphere.

Oh, bad place to be stuck.

Place to be stuck.

Tim is so funny.

I feel like we were we loved him.

Yeah, so this is a very fun funny episode.

Despite that some of the stuff we're talking about obviously can lead to some dark.

Places, and I think it has to be noted.

I mean, it must be said that on the way to this interview, I had a squirrel.

I'm really fucked up over it.

Okay, I know for his name to be Tim Squirrel.

I thought it was weird.

No, it was weird.

Okay, before we go into the manisphere with Tim.

Oh, Megan, what's your cultiest thing this week?

Okay?

Will Kim Kardashian is speaking out about having Stockholm syndrome with Kanye West, which is a term that we hear a lot in the cult world.

It's when you get kind of attached to your abuser, right or your system of abuse.

So a lot of people in cults kind of start to love their cults or their cult leader or their abusive partner or whatever.

So there's been a lot of discourse about Stockholm syndrome, and I'll a lot of the comments are.

Like, that's not real.

Oh please, oh puh oh please.

And it was this in the Call Her Daddy episode.

Yeah, I have not listened to it yet.

I heard that it was very interesting because yeah, you look at her being with someone like Kanye, and at least for me, I was like, but they're there are four children, they had four children, and of course your brain wants to go to why why would you stay for that?

But that's what happens.

Your brain like fuses to a person and it becomes very, very difficult to leave.

Yeah, yeah, I can't wait to listen to that.

Yeah, you know, she's a complex presence that I haven't but yeah, no one deserves that, so uh yeah, I just it's just bring bring in another cult tournam into the zeitgeist.

So thought i'd bring it up here.

Yeah, and I love it.

Thanks, You're welcome.

What about you?

What's the cultiest thing of your week?

There is a news story about a group, a religious group of course in southern California actually called His Way spirit Led Assemblies, and this sounds like there is a lot that's about to be uncovered.

So basically it's run by a couple.

The man is the priest and the woman is the prophetess, Daryl Martin and Kat Martin.

So there was a child that died fifteen years ago, four year old, whose custody had been handed over to this couple, and nothing came of it.

At the time because there just wasn't enough evidence that they had actually done anything.

But a man went missing in Claremont in twenty nineteen who was also associated with this group, and another man went missing in twenty twenty three who was also associated with this group.

So what is interesting about it is that one of them, the one who went missing in twenty twenty three, had just left a church and then he went missing.

And so now there are three.

There's like, there's a mysterious and two mysterious disappearances associate with this group, which people have said is definitely a high control group.

These are allegations that are being made.

We don't know that much about what's been going on in there, but these are very like concrete allegations that have been made.

So it will be very interesting to see what happens with this case and what exactly happened to those missing men.

That's sad, I know, I know, my god.

And right here in southern California, another California.

Cult, Oh my goodness.

The couple has been arrested and apparently a ton of weapons have been recovered there, illegal weapons like converted fully automatic rifles, ghost guns without serial numbers.

Sought off rifles.

This was like a big, big gun group and they are looking for any members or former members to come talk to them.

Do you know what the overarching belief of this group was.

I think it seems like it's just a religious group where they're where Daryl is king.

Well yeah, and Shelley is prophetess.

Yeah cool and the opposite of cool, oh yeah, not cool.

So anyway, we'll keep y'all updated.

If we learn more about that, we should go investigate it.

Yeah, we're professionals.

I did want to do that.

I know we will, we will, we will, But for now, I meant for when I was for a living.

I wanted to do that for a living, when I was younger.

We will not know, we will, we will.

We're going to break a case.

But for now, let's talk to Tim Squirrels.

Let's do it.

Welcome Tim Squirrel to trust me.

Thank you for joining.

Us, Thanks so much for having me.

You are here with us today because I found some of your work when googling in cells, as I tend to do sometimes.

You know, it's something we all have to do.

Can you talk to us a little bit about your academic background and your area of work.

So look, there comes a time in everyone's life where you have to google in cells.

I think that time came for me slightly earlier than a lot of people, and that's probably why I'm here.

So I started out life by professional life, I guess as an academic.

I was doing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh and I was looking at how people in the online communities come to trust each other and form relationships of authority and expertise.

And when I started that in about twenty fifteen, no one gave a shit because they thought that the Internet didn't really matter.

It was like an esoteric kind of thing that this guy was doing as a kind of self indulgent research project.

And then people really rapidly realized that actually did matterical a lot.

I was looking at Reddit and I got quite interested in how language spreads, and the way that I became interested in in cells particularly was I was looking at the spread of the word cuck across Reddit, and I obviously realized that it had really well initially started in the fetish community, but then rapidly spread across the kind of men's rights space.

So a lot of them talking about the idea of cooking or cuckoldry being in some way linked to feelings of inferiority.

There's a lot of race stuff in there.

But then I was thinking, well, what about other language that we see in these spaces, and the language that was increasingly common amongst the kind of extreme right I was noticing was coming mostly from the in cell community, or at least it was a disproportionate representation, And so I started looking at the in cell guys and at that point they were all on Reddit.

This was before the kind of Night of Long Knives when Reddit sort of kicked all of them off, and after that I sort of got quite absorbed in them for a little while.

It was a really good way of not doing my PhD and doing something else.

And so that's how I became kind of fascinated within cells and how they have a particular form of group identity.

And I think there's a lot to unpack there.

I'm assuming you guys are going to want to talk about them in terms of kind of cultic or cultish sort of framing, and I haven't seen that done too much.

But the more I thought about it, while I was listening to a couple of you guys, older episodes, the more it made a little bit of sense to me.

Do you think there's a world in which you could have ended up as an inseell?

I think?

Do I think there's a world in which I could have ended up as an in cell?

I think is a question that a lot of people who have worked in this field have asked themselves, and I think the answer for almost everyone is both yes and no.

I think that it's kind of trite to do the if only life hadn't gone the way went for me, that maybe I would have been there, you know, there but for the grace of God go I.

But I do think that looking back on my teenage years, there is certainly periods of time where I was more embittered or more feeling as though, you know, I was never going to be attractive, going to be popular, never going to be wanted.

And those are the feelings that provide the seeds in which misogynistic beliefs can grow.

But they can grow in a number of different directions, right, so for some people you end up in the red pill space where they go, Okay, I feel like no one wants me the way that I'm going to deal with this, and that I'm going to go to the gym, get really ripped, and I'm going to earn a shipload of money, and that's the thing that's going to allow me to become popular for women, right, But then the in cell path is different to that, to backlash to that.

So that's the black pill, the idea that not only am I not popular now, but I'm never going to be wanted.

No one's ever going to want me, no woman will ever want to fuck me.

And consequently, I'm just going to embrace this kind of nihilistic set of beliefs.

And where you go, which direction you go, is dependent on a whole bunch of different factors, in the same way that people with different kinds of vulnerabilities can get drawn into different kinds of cults or different kinds of movements.

You know, for some people it's going to be really new age or spiritual people, it's going to be much more in the fascist direction.

I mean, self help is already so.

It's rich for culty behaviors to emerge, and in some weird way, it's like this in cell movement is an inverse self help group, where people are relating to it as if it is self help.

For sure.

In fact, if you look at certain parts of the in cell community, increasingly they're over the last five years or so, they have become very self helpy.

So luks maxing has become really main industry, right, Yeah, like the idea that it's everything from you know, really basic stuff sort of the standard like go to the gym, lose some weight, change your diet, get a haircut, have a shower, through to I'm going to break my fucking legs in order to get them lengthened and like undergo horrifying surgery that wouldn't be out of place in the horror movie.

And so that is self help, but it's also absurd.

Yeah, so yeah, there's that part of it.

But I also think that what you're saying about the being the inverse of self help is very interesting because there are certain ways in which the in cel space specifically is a reaction to a self help movement.

It's the idea that nothing can get better, you might as well and their words lay down and rot, and that that's the really common term.

Going back again, this is like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and they used to call it the down and rot lifestyle or they'd say, you hope or rope or hope rope or cope, like the idea that you would either kill yourself or you would cope.

And specific cope has a specific, actually kind of technical meaning, which is that it's the idea you're going to embrace beliefs that will never actually make your life better, but which you'll kind of consistently believe will.

And so they would see any kind of self help stuff as a cope.

That is so fascinating.

So I like, I just have this general idea of manisphere.

I know a bit about pickup artist stuff, but that's more like pre this era of internet, more like early two thousands.

Yeah, yeah, you're sort of like mid two thousands nil Strauss the game.

Yes, I like wrote an art I've like gone on pickup artists weekends and written about it and so but excellent in terms of right now.

Like okay, so you say there's in Cells, which are it's more nihilistic sort of attitude, and then there's red Pill, Like what else is there where does.

Andrew Taite fallen all of this?

Oh god?

Okay and wait, sorry, just to real quick for any listeners who don't know in Cell means involuntary celibate.

It means somebody who women do not want to have sex with and they're mad about it.

And there are people who just don't know that term.

So go on.

Yeah, sorry, I've started from a level of like a baseline assumption about exposure to the term in cell at this point.

Yeah, and we'll see.

So the classical and I say classical as though it's like hellenistic, but I mean classical is in about five ten years ago.

Taxonomy of the manosphere is in cells in one corner, blackpill.

The idea is that, like the locus of control, whether you're able to change your own existence, your own life is external, that is, and you cannot change it is kind of inherent in the world.

You've got men going their own way or MiG taw in another corner, and they are the ones who sort of say we need to stop talking to women entirely, completely disengage from women, and go sometimes monk mode.

So you basically you're going to try and disentangle your life from matriarchy.

This is so weird.

My date I went on two days ago used these terms, including literally saying he is in monk mode right now.

Sorry, go on.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, sorry.

Continue.

I was like, wait, what.

Will there be a second date?

Well?

He literally was like, I'm not dating right now.

I shouldn't have even gotten on this date.

Oh well, it sounds like he's a meg Towers about what he did say.

He's like, very fascinated by in cell communities, and he didn't reference meg Tao as something he's doing.

I don't am I saying you're wrong.

I don't know what the fuck it is.

But he was sort of explaining it to me.

Going towards going their own way.

But then the fact that he literally described himself as in monk mode is shocking.

Oh.

I mean I feel like it's it's dripped into almost every man's unconscious.

Yeah.

Yeah, that is precisely what I was going to say, is that not everyone who gets a bit obsessed within cell communities is terrible.

For sure, I'm obsessed within cell communities.

Yeah, but you're also terrible.

Well that's true of self interested reason for saying that this stuff has become deeply mainstream.

Yeah, the idea of chads and stacies, of looksmaxing, the idea of talking about virgins in like this really specific way, the idea of being black pilled, right, is one that a lot more people, maybe not you know your uncle, but a lot of folks just who are vaguely online but aren't really immersed in the mansphere would now know about.

And the idea of being pilled is so so mainstream now, and obviously that comes from the red pill.

But it's possible that your day is a meg tail.

He's just a guy who's picked up some with vocabulary.

I think it's more likely that, but well, yeah, I mean it just the way the algorithm works is so bizarre, and we'll get into it, i'm sure in a bit.

But like I had a relationship with somebody who was like I love that you go to the gem and I love that's one of your coping mechanisms.

Yay go you, and I was like thank you.

And then he got red pilled by some sort of like algorithm where he'd be like, I know you're going to the gem to cheat on me?

What?

Literally?

What?

And I love to hook up with people while I'm sweating, but it was and then like I told one of my guy friends and he was like, yeah, I see that content all the time, And I was like, oh my god, make it make us up anyway.

Yeah, that's a red pill example.

Corrector is that a black pill?

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's much more red pill and that's much more so just to I guess, round off our taxonomy.

So you've got your insults, you've got your mag towls, you've got your pick up artists who lowly you've talked about, and then you've got your classic red pill like men's rights activists.

Okay, so think of in the UK, we had this group called Fathers for Justice and in the mid two thousands, and they became quite well known for being very divorced and also for doing things like dressing up as Spider Man and climbing up buildings in order to protest for kind of father's rights.

The idea is that custody courts are particularly unfair to men.

You know, you're real classic wow, I'm a man and I'm oppressed sort of stuff.

You know, I hate alimony, my ex wife's a bitch like that kind of thing.

And did you refer to them as very divorced?

Oh yeah yeah, extremely divorced?

Yeah yeah, okay, wow, that is so interesting.

I know, I mean, like I'm sure there's like there are valid points to be made, they're about custody battles like that.

Then that's the problem, Yeah, that.

All of these things have a little kernels of truth there.

Yeah.

Yeah, as with all conspiracy theories, we're all cults, we're all extreme beliefs, there's some small seed of truth around which everything rots.

Right today and this is where we're in a slightly different space, a lot of this stuff a has gone mainstream.

I mean, there was a lot of discourse after the second Trump election around the idea that managecer influencers were in some way responsible for the election result.

I'm not going to comment on that specific claim, but it's mainstream.

And also there is a lot more kind of agglomeration of manisphere and misogyny with grindset, hustle culture spaces.

Right, So it used to be that you could just go to a sub reddite and talk about how much he hated when men, and no one was trying to make money out of it.

You know, we've lost we've lost sight of the true meaning of misogyny.

It's been commercialized.

Right, exactly, exactly.

No longer can you just enjoy a bit of misogyny with your pals in a Reddit forum.

It's a sort of amateur way.

It's all professionalized these days.

Joking aside, though, if you look at someone like Andrew Tate, that's precisely the personification of this, right, Because it's not just about inculcating beliefs that women are inferior, that they are intrinsically gonna cheat on you because they're going to the gym and they're going to end up with Chad or Tyrone or whoever.

It's also about getting money out of you.

Yes, And not only is it about getting money out of you, but it's about making you believe that you're going to make money in the process.

Right, So it's a pyramids.

I was going to say, it's like MLMs for men.

mL Men's sorry, I was making a few and amens, don't worry.

I was like multi level marketing and Tim.

Honey, honey, MLM familiar America.

We have these things we call the MLMs and schemes.

Legally, they're not.

People like Andrew Tate are swooping in to these communities who have an unmet want or need and basically saying I have the answer for you, and if you give me this money and join my fucking thing.

Yeah that's a great summary.

Yeah, but how do they make money off of it?

How do they like?

Then they're saying, then you'll start your own little Andrew Tate group and you'll be the leader.

It depends on Okay.

So it used to be if you and Neil Strauss you'd write the game, you'd cash in on that.

And if you were a pick up artist, you would sell your ebooks online and then you'd sell a course and people would come to your course and you'd shout them in person, and you tell me they weren't real men.

But if they just followed the things that you were telling them, when they could become real men.

Now it's more sophisticated, but it's also just as simple.

Right.

So Andrew Tait was making money by getting people to subscribe to his Hustler's University Bullshit, which then became known as the Real World.

And the idea was that if you caught enough controversy and you made your name big enough that loads of people would come, and loads of them would hate you, it didn't matter because some of them would subscribe to your scheme to get to you in a circle where you would teach them the principles, which is basically a real it's selling them an ebook with extra steps, except that now there's a subscription and there's the idea that you're part of an intentional community.

It's very similar to the shift from diet or like beauty communities, where they started as like I going to sell you this ebook that's going to teach you how to like I know it was the early twenty ten, so it's probably like completely lose your ass or like you like become a sig zero yep.

But now it's all like, this isn't just a diet, this is a lifestyle, and this is a community and you're joining a tribe.

Like that's where we are now with misogynists joining an intentional community built of only the finest misogyny.

So are you saying that what they're offering is like, sorry, clarify something for me, that being controversial will bring people to you as well, like their marketing that you too can be controversial and make money being controversial.

So the marketing for what you should do is slightly different.

So some of it, yes, is the idea that if you get really really good at this, then like maybe you could be the next strandry take, you could caught controversy, you could have a podcast, you could create a community.

But actually a lot of it says that the best way to make money is through what amounts to get rich quick schemes.

So the really popular ones are drop shipping, foreign currency exchange, day trading, cryptocurrency only, fans management, which is a whole like can of worms.

That basically all of these methods by which you can make loads and loads of money and you don't need to go to school.

You should drop out of school, you should become an entrepreneur.

You just hustle really hard.

Right, So this is where I say it comes into collision with hustle culture and the sort of sigma grindset bullshit, is that the idea is that you don't need any of these fancy ast degrees in your profession.

You're in your career.

Your career is basically finding the next grift and exploiting the hell out of it, and that will allow you to make six figures, move to Dubai and drive a baghatti.

And that's the that's the vibe ore in cells, like, what's the thinking in that community in terms of becoming rich and making money.

If it's more of that nihilistic like don't improve yourself thing.

The insults have changed over the last five to ten years.

There was a kind of period where it was all about Lukism.

So the idea was that your destiny in life was determined by your facial genetics and your hypight and things about your looks that can't really be changed very easily.

And my view on this was always that if you located the things that were problematic and preventing you from achieving your goals in the things that were the hardest change, then that prevented you from having to do anything about it.

Right, So it's not just that like you are a bit overweight perhaps, and that people might find you more attractive if you are to lose some weight.

Not trying to judge that as a true or false statement, but that might be some advice that someone would give.

They say that is the very first thing you should do, and that only after that can you really call yoursel of an insult, because you've done all the things that are meant to make you attractive and you're still not there.

So you're like, your wrists are too thin, your cancel tilt is wrong, your jaw is slightly too recessed.

I've rejected so many men for their wrist size.

Yeah, number one, that's exactly what I've come to expect from Stacy's like you.

Oh my god, am I Stacy?

Thank you?

Oh yeah, one hundred percent.

You'd be Stacy on the insul wards.

I'm sure they would agree.

And for audience members, yes, can you actually tell us what Stacy versus a child?

Fuck?

So, Chad is the guy who's got everything going for him.

He's six foot three, he's jacked, he's ripped, he's high status, and he's got a really big jaw.

And essentially this means that all women forever will want to have sex with Chad, and we want to settle down with Chad.

Chad will never want to settle down with any of them, because he can do better always.

The idea that in Cells have is that they call it the Peruito principle, that eighty percent of women want twenty percent of the men, and that those men are Chad.

To confirm, I looked for myself a while back on the in cell boards.

They think I'm a Chad light.

So I've got some work to do Oh.

My god, no, you are a chad what Yeah?

What's remaining?

Yeah, look don't I don't know.

Maybe they're nagging me, who knows anyway, So the LOOKI is and thing was big for a while and then you had a bunch of them basically say no, no, it's not just looks.

It's about whether you're autistic or not, or whether you have developmental or like neurodivergent issues that mean that you can't attract women.

And the reason for this, in part is because they're patron Saint Elliott Roger, who killed a number of people than himself in twenty fourteen, Basically his whole thing was, yes, a little bit about how he looked, but also about how he girls just laughed at him, how he was, you know, the supreme gentleman, but they didn't want him anyway.

And in cells broadly tend to agree that his main issue was not to do with his looks, but was to do with his abilities socially.

So it's a big clash interesting between the lookists and people who think that autism in particular, but your kind of social skills in general are more important.

So what interesting day is what comes out of that is much more of a kind of agreement with some of the earlier red pill guys that actually what matters isn't just your looks or whether you're neurotypical, but also things like status, wealth, etc.

And the idea is that if you make enough money, if you become high enough status, you can overcome all these things, right, like how do you account for the existence of Danny DeVito or someone?

And the idea is that if you are sufficiently high status, then you can stuff.

Of course, they then go into a lot of they extrapolate this to the most hideous things you can imagine.

So they talk about jad maxing, which is the idea that you should move to a conservative bosom country, convert to Islam, and have multiple wives.

You should try to go to a place which is misogynistic.

They talk about geomaxing or globe maxing, which is the idea that you should move to a country where white people are seen as more attractive or where your money will go further, and then you should use that as a way to exploit women into having a relationship with you.

So they start to understand power dynamics, which I think is fascinating about in cells because they kind of there is a bizarro reverse feminism about them, where in the red pill community you've got a kind of liberal feminism in reverse.

Right.

The idea is that if you personally strive hard enough, work hard enough on yourself, on your body, on your wealth, then you can succeed, right, you can overcome everything.

And the insults have a radical feminist reverse reaction to that, which is like, no, it's all about structural conditions.

It's all about not just like are you rips high status and pigh net worth, but also are you white?

Are you in a country which prizes whiteness?

Do you have autism?

Or are you autistic?

Those are the sort of thing they start to talk about, and they kind of get to intersectionality.

That's fascinating, But.

Then they go all the way back around and go, ah, no, the problem is that women are fundamentally genetically programmed to fuck with you.

Wow.

So I don't think I actually answer your question there, but I find it interesting.

So I've said it.

No, it's super interesting.

I feel like I have one thousand more questions.

But I'm trying me too.

I mean, I just have one observation and it just feels like this is a depression, and it's taken this ugly because these men aren't allowed to be like, I'm super depressed.

I don't know.

I think that is part of it.

I also think that there are horribly high expectations for what you, as a teenage boy, should be able to do and for what you should be and I think that it's very easy to become disillusioned as a result of that.

I think that's becoming worse and worse, particularly as people spend time on social media, where there are these projections of perfection which you're expected to be able to attain.

Yeah, but I think that a lot of them do recognize that they are depressed, So I don't want to put too much weight on internal surveys of in cell boards.

Yeah, but yeah, let's go there.

Most of them do think of themselves as having a mental health condition.

A lot of them think of themselves as having the neurodivergence of some kind.

So they consider themselves depressed, and unfortunately a lot of them do consider suicide.

And what I think is interesting is that they are very manipulable as a group and very vulnerable.

So, if you'll permit me, an indulgent flashback to twenty eighteen when I first started looking at in cell boards after they've been kicked off of Reddit, what is now still the biggest in cell war room began and it's gone through a lot of different iterations.

It's still run by the same people though, and on there there were far fewer rules than they were on Reddit, and it was essentially a kind of mix of Reddit culture with four Chan culture in that it was really fast loads of ship posting.

No one took anything seriously.

People said the edges possible stuff they could, and they had a real problem with pedophiles coming there and recruiting in cells.

And there was this one particular guy who used it as a recruiting ground for his now defunct forum.

The guy's now dead.

Actually it's a really weird story.

He called inser locallipse, And on inter loc ellipse he was posting behind a login wall, posting in decent images of children and child sectual abuse material.

And I remember someone saying at the time, this is the only place, the in cell forum is the only place where coming in and saying hey, you're super depressed and no one will love you.

Have you thought about abusing children?

Isn't a complete non starter, because the idea is that these people are completely desperate and there is a lot of flirtation in those spaces with things which are completely societally taboo because they feel isolated, they feel alienated from society, and they feel sometimes as though their only option would be to do something horrible.

And also there is that kind of I'm playing up for the cameras, I'm doing something edgy, I'm saying something edgy.

So it's not just earnest embracing of really awful stuff, it's also kind of doing it for the bit.

Yeah.

That brings me to the next thing I wanted to ask, which is, like, you know, say someone I feel like I've heard someone before be like, but Andrew Tad has some good videos like what would you to a newbie who's like not familiar with the manisphere?

What would you say are the dangers or harms of these communities in addition to what you just described.

So it's really hard not to start at the real extreme here.

Because I want to note off the bat that the guys who run the biggest in cell forum on the web also run another forum which I'm not going to name, which encourages suicide and provides people with information about how to kill themselves.

Oh my god.

And there's been numerous investigations since this forum, and a few years ago it was credibly linked with about fifty deaths.

Fifty.

Wow.

Yeah, it's still going, it's still around.

The British governments tried to do something about it.

They failed.

It's very very hard to take down a website, it turns out, even if you use legislation, and so that's still going.

It's still run by the same guys and they are awful.

Now.

Their argument is that we're not pro suicide with pro choice, which is a horrifying adoption of the language of liberation.

Right.

But yeah, so the worst thing that can happen is that you get sucked into this and it encourages you to not just absorb horrifying misogyny but also to potentially end your own life.

But the misogyny is pretty bad.

So the harms are also that this doesn't help you in any way, that this is a bucket of crabs that you will never escape from.

Because if you spend a lot of time in an in self forum, it's not somewhere where people want you to get better.

Hey, it's somewhere where people want to drag you down as far as possible to feel the same pain that they feel.

Right, you found the worst self help place on earth, right, So that's one of the issues.

But also it will inculcate in you the worst possible beliefs you could have about yourself and about other people.

It will push you to say that women who are murdered deserved it because of the way that they had treated men by being sexually liberal.

It will make you believe that girls who are murdered or raped deserved it because even if they hadn't done anything bad, eventually they would have done That's.

Where you get to I was just going to say, And then that further isolates them because everyone else is like, I fucking hate you, I don't care what you do.

Like it isolates you.

Yeah, completely, there is.

It's really really hard to not end up in a position where everyone just tells you to fuck off.

And then that obviously means that you retreat into the forum that accepts you.

Right, no one in your life understands you, so why not just stay in the in cell space.

There's a big interactivity between the in cell spaces and the people who critique them where they used to be.

I can't remember if there still is, but there's a big subreddit called in cell tears where they would make fun of in cells.

You know, they post the worst stuff the intel has been saying, they take the piss out of them.

And there was a degree to which that was useful as a way of shaking away people who might be tempted by in cell stuff, because it can say, look, if you get into this, people are going to mock you.

Man, that's not great.

But also it does isolate them further.

And also the in cells started to just respond to the talking point, right, So they would say, look, I've had three showers today and still no one wants to fuck me.

Right, So they realize what is being said to them, and they're able to construct narratives that invade those talking points and they build on top of that.

Right, you can't just use the same narratives over and over again expect people not to adapt and change and work around them.

Is there research on the mental health impact of just hating people or like staying in that sort of negative space, Like does that have an emotional nagging yourself?

Hating women.

Yeah, I don't know if there's particular research on that.

I do know, so I've done a bit of work with the folks in November.

I don't know if you know them.

They're the guys who run the charity which you Grow.

Yeah, yeah, and they obviously very interested in young men's health and they put out a report where they've done a lot of research search into the effects on young men of engaging with what they call male lifestyle influencers the mana sphere to you and me, And some of it was short term, kind of positive.

They saw themselves, as you know, increasingly motivated to do things like fitness and the gym and to kind of really go out and get it.

And that's how we get into Andrew Tate is A you find him funny and b you find him motivating.

But obviously it starts to drip feed you really horrible beliefs about women and also horrible beliefs about yourself, and that can result in you engaging and risky behaviors.

So if your belief is that you have to get rich really quick and you have to get jacked really quick, then that's going to cause you or at least encourage you to do some things that are not helpful.

Right.

We know that the rate of steroid abuse amongst teenage boys has skyrocketed.

We know that there's increasing tendencies for younger boys and men to try to get into cryptocurrency and get into really dodgy kind of get rich quick schemes.

Right.

I know we talked about MLMs earlier, but this is kind of the equivalent of that to some degree.

Is you know, you're selling a crypto token, yeah, and you're selling it to your followers, and your followers will buy it and you pump it and then you dump it and then they lose all their money.

Right, So crypto is MLMs for boys basically, Yeah, And that is the sort of thing that you can end up in because you started to find an interest in these guys because they were funny or they spoke to some of your insecurities.

Right.

And then, of course, and as in most cults, you know, the things you're starting to do are just making it more circular and worse.

Like you start taking steroids and now your anger is fifty times than when you started, and you have a lot more energy.

The steroids things so funny as well, because It's a really common theme in like gym spaces online for guys to talk about how they started taking steroids or getting really jacked because they wanted to appeal to women and now the only people who find them attractive for other men because so funny, it's all the other guys you also want to be jacked, who are like, wow, bro, what's your arm routine?

Literally okay, yeah, had an ex boyfriend, very jacked.

The people who commented on it the most, by far were others.

Always, always, the dudes loved it.

If I okay, let's say I'm a guy on the internet, I am nineteen, how might I first be exposed to some of this content?

These days, it's the algorithm.

So it used to be you had to kind of go out looking for it.

Back in the good old days of the internet, when, as you say, you did some pick up artists they type stuff.

When you're in the mid two thousands, you know you'd have to find the place.

You had to know what you were looking for, at least stumble on it.

Someone in the fore room had to recommend it.

These days, if you are a boy on YouTube, then you're gonna see some Andrew Tate or maybe not Andrew Tate, but you'll see some David Goggins, or you'll seizin Jordan Peterson.

And if you spend enough time hovering over that or watching that, or you comment on that or you like it, you're gonna see someone else.

And that is the first way in which you'll get into the stuff.

And what will probably happen first is it will be in the context of something funny, right, it'll be comedic, and you'll start by seeing it as this is all about jokes and having a laugh, and then you start to look into the other things that they're saying, and maybe you find something interesting in there, and maybe what you find interesting in what they have to say is about how women are sluts and will necessarily cheat on you.

But the problem is that it's so normalized.

It's not just the manosphere anymore.

You've got your trad wives, you've got your demosphere, You've got all sorts of stuff, which is kind of normalizing this from both sides as well, where you've got women who are coming onto TikTok and saying, what I really want is a husband who's going to dominate me and be head of the household and earn all the money so that I don't have to do anything.

Well, I mean yeah, yeah, I was just telling Lila I saw an article of a woman who signed on as a thirteen year old girl to TikTok just to see what happened, and immediately it was just like how to get an eating disorder, how to like and it's crazy that it just feeds it to you.

It is fucking endemic.

Is that true for a teenage for young boys as well?

I mean like a time it's like get a gun, Like what are the first things?

I mean like, yeah, I know what's being.

Served up to you.

If you're a teenage boy and like on TikTok.

Well, as you say, if you're a teenage girl you go on TikTok or we go on Instagram, then you're going to see eating to sort of stuff.

You're going to see parana content.

That has been the case for a very long time.

It is just sometimes increasingly subtle and some times increasingly in your face.

Right, there's just more of it.

There's just more of everything now than there was ten fifteen years ago.

If you are a teenage boy, then you're gonna see stuff that is about sports and about the fuck I'm trying to think of teenage boys.

Like again, I was one for He's sake guns the article she did it with boys too, and it was like immediately like gun shit.

Yeah, exactly, like you're gonna see the things that the algorithm thinks you what because they have profiled your demographic and if you are in the demographic that likes sports and guns, they're going to serve you fucking sports and guns.

And maybe you might like to touch misogyny on the side as well, and that's how you start to get this stuff.

It's insidious.

Ah, I know, so sorry.

Mine serves me ASMR and cats and it's like, we know who you are.

Mine just shows me the worst political news that you could possibly imagine.

That's all I see.

That's literally my entire feed.

So what do we do?

Can you fix it?

There is a reason I don't work on this quite so much, really more because I find it so depressing.

Yeah, partly because you know, being exposed to extreme content every day for work is a way to break your brain in fairly short order.

But also because so much of it is not just driven by individual choices.

It's structural, right, It's about how our politics works.

It's about how our culture works.

And what gives rise to the manisphere is the same stuff that gives rise to all other parts of the system.

But let's focus on something that we can maybe change, which is about technology.

Because this has been turbo charged by the algorithm, and by the algorithm, I know it's not just one thing that it's a huge number of things that are interacting with one another to create the thing that you see when you open techtok.

But the systems that they have built for Facebook, for TikTok, for Instagram, for wherever are designed to be as addictive as possible because the business model is the longer you spend on there, the more money they make from ads.

And how do you make people spend longer on there?

You make them more engaged.

And what does engagement look like, Well, it doesn't care whether you like something or hate it.

All that matters is that you spend the time.

So that means that it's designed to just make you spend as long as possible on there.

And that means that the most controversial things are things that go closest to the line without going over the line.

Those are the things that get pushed to you.

So the things that we can do are trying to push back against the idea that this is a business model that should be promoted.

Right, so there is increasingly pressure elsewhere in the world to do stuff about this problem is that often it is not perfect politically either.

But I think that trying to move towards a system which doesn't fault to recommending you the most addictive shit possible is certainly one way of helping whether and on.

An individual level, we found a video of yours that we liked from a while ago where you talked about why debating doesn't work and changing minds doesn't work the way that we think.

Oh god, wow, that's an old one.

You should do more YouTube.

Anyway, if you encounter a young man or an old man, or anyone who's seems to be, you know, going down this path or dabbling, or like they're starting to get exposed at this kind of stuff, maybe they're starting to isolate, Like how would you respond as an individual to that person.

It's really hard when I say debating doesn't work.

I'm trying to think back.

I must have made this about ten years ago.

When I say debating doesn't work, what I am talking about is that you can't just change someone's mind with enough facts and evidence and logic in order to get them out whatever belief they currently hold.

It just doesn't work that way because the way that we form our beliefs is social and emotional.

It's not based on logic, no matter how much the kind of debate bros Might wish you to think of that.

And so usually, as you guys know very well, what a cult is doing, what an extreme belief is doing is preying on a particular vulnerability that you have and filling a need in your life.

And so in order to try to take someone out of the manisphere or an in cell space or I don't know, a neo Nazi group, unfortunately, if you're already in their life, need to stay to some degree present in their life.

You can't completely cut yourself off necessarily, and you have to be kind of an anchor to some degree.

You have to be able to say the thing that you're saying right now is wrong, and here is why I believe it to be wrong.

And often you have to appeal to the humanity of the people that they're undermining in order to make that argument.

Rather than trying to say something about why there's statistic they've given you about women making up break allegations as false.

You have to appeal to the humanity of women and of everyone around them, but you also have to not say I am cutting you off, I'm pushing out of my life now.

This is not to say that all people have a duty to do that for everyone all the time.

But the way that you get someone out of these spaces is to try to make it so that they have other options.

So the way you get out of extreme groups is sometimes there's push factors, right, the situation gets so bad within them that you're looking for an alternative.

But also there have to be poor factors, which are the things that say, look, there is a life that looks better than this.

There is an alternative.

It's possible for you to have community, to have hobbies and a job and friendship and love outside of the thing in which you found yourself.

Did you say pull factors.

Yeah, So push factors and pull factors.

Oh, I love that.

Okay, I've never heard that before.

So push factors are the things that are pushing you away, that are saying, like, what you are in now is untenable.

You cannot stay in this thing or you're going to die.

And the pull factors are the things that say, look, there's something else, you could do something else with your life, and these are all the alternities for you.

So you can't necessarily create the push factors.

If you are like a professional investigative journalist whose job is to dig up dirt and like you know, sow division within a far right group, maybe you can create some push factors, but you can create pull factors and you can be there.

So my my personal background on kind of extreme beliefs is not actually in sell space.

It's actually in the religion space.

My half of my family were all Jehovah's witnesses at various points, and there are various arguments about whether that would be considered a cult or not.

But what I do know is that you cannot convince someone out of a religious commitment, but that you basically have to wait for them to have their own crisis and then still be there.

Yes, ah, we talk about this all the time.

Yep.

Yeah, So it's no different, right, it's no different.

Yeah.

Well, one of the things that I love that you said, and I believe that same video was just the language that we use can be kind of a turn off for somebody.

So the word in cell like, do they immediately recoil from that word if it's from somebody who's trying to.

Like, does it feel like an attached Yeah, it's a.

Really hard one because it is a value laiden word.

But because it's become so mainstream, it started to mean more than one thing.

So an inceel can be someone who is a committed member of a forum where people talk about being involuntarily celiber.

But they can also be some who you're just calling that because you used to call them a fedora or a neck bid, or a virgin or a fucking loser, right, and calling someone an insuet doesn't necessarily mean that much anymore.

And you have to think, does it help to call someone a for doorra or a neck bid or a fucking loser?

And the answer is sometimes yes, because you have to show them that the behavior which they're engaging in is not acceptable.

Sometimes no, because what you're trying to do is show them that you are still going to be accepted by whatever community or group or society that they are trying to cut themselves off from.

So in the same way, that you have to find boundaries with anyone.

You have to find boundaries with your language in how you talk to people as well.

And yeah, in the same way that calling someone a Nazi if they don't self identify as a Nazi, probably alienates them a bit because they're like, oh, dude, you just call anyone a Nazi these days.

Yeah, but also you can call them a Nazi and they self identify as a Nazi, they probably just go, yeah, yeah, that's correct, I'm a white nationalist, right.

Yeah.

So look, alienating language is always going to alienate.

It's not always your job to be welcoming and inclusive all the time because people who hold hateful beliefs can really cause damage.

But if you're trying to pull them out of something, yeah, it's probably not going to help your cause to make them think you're addict to that.

Well, and even outside of just like calling someone something that could be considered a slur or an insult, like we develop shorthand language in our cultures or in our subcultures, there are terms that you know, people on the left would use that people on the right would immediately shut off toward that argument just because of the term and vice versa.

Language becomes so charged so quickly, and it can be difficult to have those conversations without like it's almost like a game of taboo.

You have to figure out how to talk about the thing without saying the words.

You just have to self edit and think about every single word.

Now, that's what I've realized.

Yeah, you have to be really really careful what the language use.

Do you guys know the term thought terminating cliches?

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of that, right, except it's external.

So the moment you hear someone use a particular word, you're able to pigeonhole them in a certain category and say, Okay, this person is coming from this perspective there, and that is a perspective I disagree with or fine or have historically had bad experiences with.

So I don't need to listen to that person, right, And that that's kind of what's happening here.

So if you are talking to an in cell and you start talking about how look, it's all okay, I'm sure women must like you.

Really you just need to like take a shower once in a while, and like, have you thought about being nicer to women?

Those are the sorts of things that they are going to find really alienating.

Now obviously they should be nicer to women.

So this is about the purpose of your conversation with them.

This is about whether you're trying to build rapport as a way of hopefully helping them out at some point, because I think the truth is most people who find themselves in an in cell space will eventually not be in that space anymore.

Some of them, sadly, will stay there forever and be increasingly embittered, and particularly if their identity fuses with being in cell, if they're the moderator of the administrator of the forum, they're probably not going to leave any time to see but most of them will not be in cells forever because while it will be a facet of their identity for a while, eventually they will find someone who might appreciate them, or they will grow up.

Frankly, like a lot of them are just kids and they're just having a bit of a phase and they're acting out a bit, and they will grow out of the extreme beliefs and they will start to have some relationships with people.

That might because they go off for university, or it might be because they join some kind of social group, or it might just be luck right.

The problem I have is that those people are not completely I don't want to use the word deprogrammed, because that's obviously very freighted, but they haven't given up the beliefs that led them down that way in the first place.

So the worry I have always had about themselves is not just that they are a horrible group that hates themselves and hates other people.

It's that after you get out, you still hold some of the residual beliefs about the world and about women, and that will likely influence the way in which you interact with those people.

I don't think that you can come out of being an in cell and have a healthy, functioning relationship in which you respect your partner.

And that's why I think that there is a threat to women and girls that is posed by ex in cells, perhaps even more than there is in celts, because a lot of insults just stay in their room and post online all the time, right, And that obviously can have its own harms, like harassing women Online's still harassing women, but they're often just talking to themselves, and the moment you go out into the world and you start having relationships, that's the moment you can actually hurt someone.

I've not thought about that.

Yeah, going back to the poll factor's question, what are some poll factors that would work?

Like how how would you offer that to someone?

How do you offer pull factors?

Yeah, hey man, there's a basketball game.

Let's go to a movie one day with some that yeahs on movie.

What you would do, lonlier is you'd put on your your best basketball hat, baseball hat, and and like dress up as a as a little boy and say, hey, buddy, go to the basketball game.

That's what you do.

That is basically it.

Right, So you guys are right.

You can try to make them feel included, and you can try to consistently not pressure people, but at least provide them with the possibility of something else.

Right, Oh, there's this guy in our group.

He's kind of a weirdo, but like, let's still invite him to the movie night.

Like, let's keep him in the book club.

Like, I don't know why movie night in book club are the things I go to very much in my mid thirties.

Yeah, that's kind of part of it.

And it's just providing them with the knowledge and the idea there is something else than what they have right now, right, And most of that is about the human need for company and community and love and all the fluffy things, yeah, which you have told me nothing in these spaces, right that the manusphere wants to grind down the idea that any of that means anything.

It's all about whether you're making enough paper, and you're hitting enough like personal records in the gym, and whether you're high enough statis, so you've got enough cars.

All those things are completely hollow and empty.

They're kind of like the sorts of things that someone might like if they like to live in Dubai.

You know.

It's like a high, a temporary high that doesn't actually shit.

Like.

I also think that's a product of the culture we live in, like America at least, is a very individualistic society and very fixated on this idea that if you achieve enough then you will finally reach happiness, which of course we know not to be true.

The thing that you were saying, Megan is also true.

It is about appealing to a teenage sense of what the world is, the idea that the things that are most important are like material possessions like fast cars and dominating your friends and opponents like those are very twelve year old approaches to the world.

True, and it is very clear from looking at someone like Andrew Tate actually kind of is appealing to twelve year old boys.

Yes, because most men in their twenties, thirties, forties look at that guy and think, what a fucking embarrassment.

You know, you look at this guy fronting up as though he's you know, like the kingshit of Fuck Mountain, and you find that embarrassing, whereas a twelve year old does not.

And that's what's so insidious about this.

He is aiming to draw in kids, yes, because they are impressionable, and because they will listen to you.

Yes, and a few adults get thrown in along the way.

I was going to ask, is that I mean, I guess maybe just because I'm an adult.

The exposure that I have to people who are fans of people like Andrew Tait are also adults.

And you know, the misogynistic comments on my Instagram that I've been posting are grown ass men.

You know.

I'll go on a random data and someone will say something and I'll be like, oh, you're oh you love Jordan Peterson.

Oh that's their monk mode.

I don't think that man is an insult, but but I have I did sleep with someone in the morning.

I saw the other side of his door that had a twelve Rules for Life poster on it, which was quite a shock.

Who writes that?

Jordan Peterson?

God?

And anyway, like, you know, like, I'm maybe it's just a matter of exposure because of my age.

Maybe love insults.

Maybe, But I like, is there data on the fan bases of these people?

Looka it might also because you live in la you have really questionable.

Taste in the men are great.

This is a very very rare occurrence, just like once a free four years.

Is sorry, I forgot the question because I was determined to mildly mock you.

Data on age range.

Oh God, Yeah, Okay, so I'm not entirely certain about age.

What I will say is that typically more conservative attitudes towards gender are something which are held by older men, though of course, there is increasingly data coming out that shows a worrying divergence in political beliefs between young men and young women.

The weird one for that is South Korea, where it's really extreme, but also in the US as well, where young women are increasing left wing, young men are increasingly kind of center right, and that is creating friction between people with different genders.

So how would I puts It's not so much that it is more likely that you hold misogynistic beliefs you for your particular age, because statistically, I think you're more likely to hold them if you are older, because older folks tend to hold traditional gender views and those are misogynistic.

Yeah, but my grandpa's not getting on Reddit, right.

Because exactly so if you're if you are older and hold those beliefs, you'll get expressed in a different.

Way, right, right, right, going to yeah, exactly, yeah, precisely.

So it could just be that Lola is very unlucky and is meeting a bunch of guys who really like Jordan Peterson.

Don't be fair, that's a lot.

I think it's actually one guy, this recent guy.

I'm telling you, he's not He's normal.

He's just fascinated by Ripped.

That guy way we have really got in on him.

I know.

I feel like, but.

I think you're fine.

I think it's fine.

You are allegedly not an insult.

But again, like, yeah, like, the most hateful comments I received are not by they seem to be by men in their twenties, thirties, forties.

Yeah, that makes complete sense.

And I would note that misogyny can be written out in many forms and everyone has access to Instagram, right, So finding your stuff and posting hateful shit underneath it doesn't indicate the information environment that person has been taught up in, right.

They could be on Reddit, they could be on four cham, they could be on Facebook, they could be well the only the only filter is literally have they come to your Instagram feed and that's it.

Yeah, they could be from anywhere.

Yeah, totally, Misogyny becomes in many forms, and sure it has.

She's endemic.

I'm just wondering if anybody has ever like becomes such a close knit community on these insul forums that they become not in cells.

They're like, actually, community is good and we should embrace healthy values.

I kind of want to write a movie about it.

I think that's a beautiful idea for a movie script.

Yeah, and I don't think it has ever happened.

They have come together.

It's like a kind of like friends to enemies to friends the thing, Yeah, or like they come together through the power of love exactly.

It's a Christmas movie.

It's a Christmas movie.

I don't like it.

I like it.

Loving the time of insuldom, I like it.

Do you have any final thoughts or messages that you would like the people to receive?

We have messages for the people.

Hug your friends, love your loved ones.

No, but genuinely, I do think part of it is that is I think that this is not me doing a wishy was she like love across the divide shit?

Because frankly, right now, the world is awful and there are a whole lot of people who are prove themselves very incapable of redemption.

But if there is someone in your life who is going through some rough shit and you find that they are moving in a hateful direction, it can be very very tempting to completely cut them off, and I would not blame you if you did.

But keeping a small a window open may mean the difference between that person having nowhere to go and having somewhere potentially to go at the point where everything blows up.

I think that's true of all of the cults you guys have talked about.

I think that's true of basically any extreme movement or community that it's very easy to completely alienate someone when they've become such an asshole.

But I think it's important to recognize that they may need somewhere to go eventually, and if you love them, then maybe think about keeping them at least partly at arm's length in your life.

That's going to be a line on the Christmas movie.

We hear it over and over again, and I'm happy to hear you reiterate it because I think it does seem to really remain true throughout every group and every type of weird fucking belief.

It really does.

Yeah, well, I'm sorry to beak cliche, but I'm happy to be part of a chorus.

I guess.

No.

I mean it's nice to hear it pertaining to this particular subculture as well, because it is such a scary and you know, seemingly prevalent and growing subculture.

And I guess it's a subculture that we're going to need men to really step up and do some of the dirty work.

Yeah, this is what kind of sucks is.

I think a lot of the work on this, at least the early really good work was done by women, and I think it is fantastic, and I recognize that women have a lot to contribute to this.

Sorry, this sounds really weird like, but we have a unique contribution to make.

However, what I was going to say is a it shouldn't all be on women to solve misogyny.

Obviously, be a lot of these guys are not going to listen to women exactly, And I think that there is a degree to which men will have to step up, as you say again, to sort this shit out.

And I think that it's really it's going to have to be an all genders kind of vibe.

But yes, men have a responsibility in this direction as well, and some of them are doing really, really good work.

And actually, the Credent Coalition that I have been part of with the November guys is a lot of them are guys showing what good male role models can look like and are trying to do the work to provide the community and provide the spaces that allow boys to find healthy, productive outlets for hard.

Feelings, baseball and movies.

Here's the point at which I proposed to you to keep doing your YouTube.

Okay, your proposal is noted.

I have not done a YouTube in about six years, that is correct.

I did note that.

Yeah, I will consider it again.

I appreciate the vote of confidence.

And where do people find your work or the organization you work for, whatever you'd like to share these days.

I want I think I'm at Tim Squirrel, but without any vowels, I think is where I'm at these days.

Okay, but I used to be on Twitter, I'm not anymore.

If you look me up on Google, you will probably find some way of contacting me in the way that Lola did.

Actually, I didn't know why email was that easy to find.

Oh, I remember if you look hard enough.

Amazing.

Thank you so much, Tom, This is a really cool conversation.

Thank you so much for having me.

This has been really, really fun.

Thank you to Tim Squirrel for coming on Megan.

Of course I have to ask you if you think that you would join the Manisphere.

Yeah.

I think if I was a man who was down on my luck and super lonely, I would be very susceptible to a group like that.

The reason I asked him if he would ever join was because I've talked to a good amount of guys who've been like, Yeah, if I had stayed on the YouTube path that I was on when I was younger, I totally could have ended up on that road, Like the resentment was there, the loneliness was there, the isolation, you know.

So I think it can happen to anyone who's Yeah, yeah, I.

Think it would be a really nice little coat hanger to hang my resentments and problems on and just be like it's them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And as an update, I did speak with my date about him using the term, and we joked about it and I told him we talked about it on this podcast, and I thought it was funny.

He is not an insul cool.

I know everyone was burning to know ledge of my seat.

No, that's good to know.

That's good to know.

The guy with the poster on the back of the door still might be that.

He's actually a nice guy.

He's just he's just a little misled.

He's a very nice man.

Oh my god, he's my friend and sol apologist over here.

I'm just kidding it, Okay, So yeah, I would be an unsolved probably, I don't know.

Maybe, I mean i'd probably grow out of it, but.

Yeah, I mean, oh me at sixteen if I found likely like that for girls total in selling, Yeah, yeah.

The guy at the record store down the street did not want to date me and I was pissed about it totally.

Yeah.

All right, well, thanks for listening y'all.

Come back next week and as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out for radi flat.

And never ever trust me by.

This has been an exactly right production hosted by me Lola.

Blanc and Me Megan Elizabeth.

Our senior producer is Gee Holly.

This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker is Patrick Kottner.

Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hartstark and Danielle Kramer.

You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast or on TikTok at trust Me coult podcast.

Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation, Shoot us an email at trust mepod at gmail dot com.

Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.