Full Transcript for Harrison Hill, The Oracle's Daughter

Mouse a Cookie, which I don't know if you know that- Yeah. 00:03:52.419 --> 00:03:52.860 Yeah, I know that. 00:03:52.938 --> 00:03:53.080 Of 00:03:53.081 --> 00:03:54.227 course admissible title. 00:03:54.235 --> 00:03:56.147 I'm sure your- Yes your, your listeners do as well. 00:03:56.584 --> 00:04:09.640 Uh, there is a little one-hour musical version of that, and I did a tour of that for, for a couple months, and I came back to New York, and I didn't have another gig lined up, and I just felt like I needed a proper job. 00:04:09.640 --> 00:04:12.709 I mean, both for, like, money and for my brain. 00:04:12.724 --> 00:04:17.805 And so- Mm-hmm I got a job working at a theater advertising agency as a copywriter. 00:04:17.848 --> 00:04:28.416 And I worked there for a number of years through my 20s, and that was this interesting sort of bridge because, you know, I- I'd studied theater and then, uh, and I was writing, but I wasn't writing, you know, books or articles or anything. 00:04:28.418 --> 00:04:33.108 I was writing taglines and, uh, TV commercials and radio spots and things like that. 00:04:33.134 --> 00:04:49.290 And so I did that for a couple years, and then I did a, a, a writing workshop in, in Greece with Cheryl Strayed, which was this extraordinary experience and, I mean, honestly, like, you know, quite life-changing'cause I came out of that feeling like I really wanna write more seriously. 00:04:49.290 --> 00:05:02.446 I mean, all through those years I was writing on my own, and I, I had a blog, and I love journal writing a lot, and I think that that's actually the best, some of the best writing education that I got is just being with- Mm-hmm myself on the page for all those years. 00:05:02.485 --> 00:05:07.319 And so then I went to Columbia from there, and then in the years since then have been, you know, writing professionally. 00:05:07.319 --> 00:05:11.884 And what's funny is that I work freelance for the ad agency where I started back in my 20s. 00:05:11.894 --> 00:05:12.701 So it's, it's funny. 00:05:12.711 --> 00:05:14.946 It's like I can't, I can't get away, and I don't want to. 00:05:15.002 --> 00:05:24.334 It's a great gig to have because I can write through the morning, and then I get in the subway and I go up to Times Square and I go to the office and start writing ads for The Book of Mormon. 00:05:24.346 --> 00:05:25.382 That's really cool. 00:05:25.420 --> 00:05:28.831 So when you went to school, your MFA, it said for nonfiction. 00:05:28.853 --> 00:05:31.696 Now specifically- Right I'm trying to figure out how to phrase the question. 00:05:31.711 --> 00:05:35.577 Is it specifically like a journalism type writing, or how does that work for nonfiction? 00:05:35.577 --> 00:05:36.884 Or I don't understand how that works. 00:05:37.081 --> 00:05:37.552 Yeah, yeah. 00:05:37.552 --> 00:05:44.726 It's very, it's very interesting, and frankly, I didn't know that these kind of programs existed until I took that, uh, workshop in Greece

that I mentioned earlier. 00:05:44.733 --> 00:05:51.536 A writer who also was teaching there, Rachel DeWoskin, this major- amazing writer, she, she told me about these programs and, and actually wrote me a recommendation. 00:05:51.536 --> 00:05:57.117 But yes, it was not a journalism program, and it was not a fiction writing program, obviously. 00:05:57.466 --> 00:06:02.535 It was maybe what you could call, like, literary nonfiction. 00:06:02.545 --> 00:06:07.685 It was a lot of, it was a lot of people Because I, I never wanted to be, like, a newspaper reporter. 00:06:07.841 --> 00:06:09.617 That wasn't the kind of writing I enjoyed doing. 00:06:09.658 --> 00:06:13.494 I didn't wanna, like, show up at city hall and kind of hound criminals for quotes. 00:06:13.802 --> 00:06:17.274 Though frankly- Yeah that's actually what I d- I did a little bit of that for this book, now that I mention it. 00:06:17.766 --> 00:06:27.362 I wanted to do more sort of beat journalism, and so I did the program, and a lot of the people in that program, myself included, write a lot of first-person personal essay, memoir, that kind of stuff. 00:06:27.399 --> 00:06:33.531 And I certainly did that as well, and I really enjoyed that and was learning a great deal. 00:06:33.531 --> 00:06:54.141 And then I took a research class with the writer Brenda Wineapple, incredible writer, and it just really keyed me into the possibilities of a kind of writing that I, I honestly didn't really even know existed in a funny way, which is I guess you could say New Yorker style, you know, long form journalism, long form narrative literary journalism. 00:06:54.141 --> 00:07:04.216 I mean, I sort of don't like using the word literary because it sort of suggests that sort of more straightforward journalism doesn't have kind of literary, uh, cred, which I don't think is necessarily the case at all. 00:07:04.528 --> 00:07:15.978 But that class really opened things up for me, and I started working on a, a project That became my thesis for graduate school, which was a completely reported project and had no first person in it whatsoever. 00:07:16.007 --> 00:07:24.548 And that led me to actually taking a class in the journalism school with a professor named Sam Freedman, who teaches this book proposal writing class every year. 00:07:24.589 --> 00:07:31.747 And it was an amazing experience, and I wrote a book proposal for that, and I just learned the rigmarole, uh, uh, of how all that works. 00:07:31.749 --> 00:07:38.303 And it was amazing because, again, I, I do like writing from the first person, but the world is certainly infinite in terms of what, like, I can write for myself. 00:07:38.315 --> 00:07:41.913 But what's interesting to write for other people, I, I think is a little bit more limited. 00:07:42.221 --> 00:07:45.963 But the world, the volume of stuff out there is, of course, entirely infinite. 00:07:45.982 --> 00:07:47.942 And so I got really excited about that. 00:07:48.004 --> 00:07:57.187 And also, frankly, you know, there's just so many more opportunities for publishing and the possibility of having a career if you're writing outside of the personal. 00:07:57.187 --> 00:08:04.041 I mean, obviously this is probably pretty obvious to your listeners, but I didn't just wanna write personal essays or even, you know, a memoir or something. 00:08:04.064 --> 00:08:06.192 I wanted to write books for the rest of my life. 00:08:06.192 --> 00:08:06.545 And so- 00:08:06.636 --> 00:08:06.970 Yeah 00:08:06.970 --> 00:08:09.112 I'm really glad- Yeah that it kinda happened that way. 00:08:09.954 --> 00:08:11.411 Okay, so I wanna get into the book. 00:08:11.415 --> 00:08:14.565 Do you have, for our, our listeners or viewers, an elevator pitch of it? 00:08:14.908 --> 00:08:18.536 So the book is called The Oracle's Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult. 00:08:18.593 --> 00:08:32.081 It tells the true story of a woman-led cult called the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, which began in Sacramento, California in the 1980s and collapsed in remote New Mexico in 2017. 00:08:32.144 --> 00:08:33.655 So the book tells the story of this group. 00:08:33.706 --> 00:08:39.241 It, it tells this, that story through the eyes of a woman named Sarah Green, whose mother founded the group. 00:08:39.272 --> 00:08:46.408 Through Sarah's eyes, we follow the growth of the group, and we also follow Sarah's escape from it and her journey to start a new life on the outside. 00:08:46.471 --> 00:08:52.081 The book is also an examination of American religious history and extremism more broadly. 00:08:52.086 --> 00:08:59.745 I wanted to think about the ways that this one particular group could say something bigger, something broader, something more universal. 00:09:00.092 --> 00:09:04.437 And so to that end, yes, there's a lot of history, and there's also just information about cults. 00:09:04.438 --> 00:09:05.337 You know, who joins? 00:09:05.341 --> 00:09:05.933 Why do they join? 00:09:05.937 --> 00:09:06.658 How do they get out? 00:09:06.946 --> 00:09:07.535 All that kind of stuff. 00:09:07.599 --> 00:09:16.087 So my hope is that it's working at a couple different altitudes, which is, that would be the, the language that my editor used sh- with me, which was always really, really helpful. 00:09:16.303 --> 00:09:19.438 Stephen King said,"It's terrifying, gripping, all true. 00:09:19.438 --> 00:09:23.846 I couldn't put it down, and it would make one hell of a movie," which is what I kept thinking through this whole thing. 00:09:23.846 --> 00:09:28.729 I kept thinking it was a Netflix s-series or something or, or an Apple series. 00:09:28.729 --> 00:09:28.803 Really cool, yeah. 00:09:28.803 --> 00:09:31.251 The Kirkus Review praised it as compelling and thoughtful. 00:09:31.504 --> 00:09:37.883 Book List in a star review described the book as,"A deeply compelling experience," and Publishers Weekly said,"It isn't easy to shake. 00:09:37.913

--> 00:09:43.318 Readers will be haunted," which was totally so much of what my experience was with the book as well. 00:09:43.351 --> 00:09:49.859 I think this kind of fascination with cults- Mm-hmm and then kind of having a veil lifted and seeing behind something that's so specific. 00:09:49.889 --> 00:09:53.404 It's what you expect and worse than you expect in some ways. 00:09:53.414 --> 00:09:53.485 Mm-hmm. 00:09:53.485 --> 00:09:53.894 Yeah. 00:09:53.894 --> 00:09:55.296 And that's what's so crazy about it. 00:09:55.327 --> 00:10:05.038 I know you took five years kind of investigating this and researching this world, but can you tell everybody the story of how this kind of came to you? 00:10:05.048 --> 00:10:07.048 Yeah, it was sort of miraculous and out of nowhere. 00:10:07.048 --> 00:10:14.405 So back in 2018, my younger brother and his wife moved to a ground floor apartment in Brooklyn, which is where I myself live. 00:10:14.452 --> 00:10:18.206 And one day, a pipe in their apartment burst and the, and the apartment flooded. 00:10:18.327 --> 00:10:23.235 Their next door neighbor saw that they were in distress, and she came on by and she helped them clean up. 00:10:23.261 --> 00:10:26.523 And so in the weeks and months that followed, they all became friendly. 00:10:26.993 --> 00:10:33.510 And eventually, this woman started opening up about herself, and she revealed that she had grown up in a cult that was run by her mother. 00:10:33.547 --> 00:10:38.865 My brother and his wife were both obviously quite interested in that and learned a little bit more. 00:10:38.865 --> 00:10:42.384 And then my brother came to me and he said,"You know, I met this woman. 00:10:42.384 --> 00:10:43.561 She has this remarkable story. 00:10:43.562 --> 00:10:45.563 I think you-- You know, are you interested? 00:10:45.571 --> 00:10:46.070 Do you wanna meet her? 00:10:46.070 --> 00:10:49.607 I, you know, you-- Perhaps you wanna write about her." And I, and I said,"Absolutely. 00:10:49.607 --> 00:10:56.875 Of course." And so in late 2019, I got a beer with Sarah Green, the titular oracle's daughter. 00:10:56.879 --> 00:10:59.142 Her face is really big on the cover of this book. 00:10:59.751 --> 00:11:04.783 Um, I got a beer with her and, you know, those kind of meetings are always kind of like a first date. 00:11:04.794 --> 00:11:07.316 You know, you're saying, you're seeing, okay, what is your vibe? 00:11:07.336 --> 00:11:09.707 D-do, do I feel like I match with your vibe? 00:11:09.708 --> 00:11:10.937 Do you feel like you match with me? 00:11:10.953 --> 00:11:17.096 Do we feel like we could have a kind of reportorial relationship, which is an extraordinarily intimate relationship? 00:11:17.336 --> 00:11:41.032 You know, she gave me a quick overview of her first story, and immediately I was like,"Oh, I'm gonna have to, I have to write about this." And so, I mean, I've said this before, but I, you know, leaving that bar, walking down Washington Avenue carrying like a

little delicate egg, and I was like,"I just need to not drop this." You know, it-- Like writing about this stuff will be obviously quite difficult, but If I can get out of the way of the story enough, I think it'll work. 00:11:41.067 --> 00:11:48.090 And so from there, I actually, I wrote an article about Sarah for The Cut, and that piece came out in 2021. 00:11:48.109 --> 00:11:50.953 And already by that point, I th- I thought, you know, this has to be a book. 00:11:50.956 --> 00:11:52.673 There's just so much more material here. 00:11:52.692 --> 00:11:56.895 And I proposed the idea to Sarah, and, and she was on board. 00:11:57.464 --> 00:11:59.856 But the book is obviously about much, much more than Sarah. 00:11:59.881 --> 00:12:08.123 So she and I continued with the interviews that I, that we'd begun years earlier, and then I sold a proposal for the book in the summer of 2022, and it came out this past spring. 00:12:08.157 --> 00:12:08.568 Wow. 00:12:08.845 --> 00:12:19.414 So was she instrumental then in connecting you with people like Maura, who was one of the other real integral parts of the book, one of the other, the, the three women that you kind of follow, in kind of connecting dots for you? 00:12:20.092 --> 00:12:20.664 Sure, yeah. 00:12:20.664 --> 00:12:22.657 So the book is basically the story of three women. 00:12:22.658 --> 00:12:26.057 It's the story of Sarah, the daughter of the cult leader and founder. 00:12:26.461 --> 00:12:28.758 It's the story of Deborah, the founder and leader. 00:12:29.254 --> 00:12:31.989 And it's the story of Maura, the first member. 00:12:32.124 --> 00:12:40.366 Um, yeah, Sarah was very helpful in introducing me to Maura and then Maura introducing me to other people, and other people in turn introducing me to others. 00:12:40.398 --> 00:12:46.789 I mean, that's the wonderful thing about having sources who are, who are open to writing about them and enthusiastic about it. 00:12:47.342 --> 00:12:52.432 You know, there's also a lot of just cold emailing, writing, calling, sending letters. 00:12:52.433 --> 00:12:59.461 You know, some people who were really helpful, sources who, who led me to some really important information are, are quite old. 00:12:59.477 --> 00:13:04.399 There's a woman in her 90s who was just hugely helpful, and I just wrote her a letter. 00:13:04.400 --> 00:13:17.378 You know, I mailed her a letter out, and I printed out a copy of the article that I'd written for The Cut, and I said,"You know, I'm working on this book and I think you may have some information that could be really helpful that I would love to hear." And so eventually one day she j- she just called me. 00:13:17.385 --> 00:13:23.283 And so I'm, I'm very much a believer in, like, you know, try all the avenues of reaching out to people, not just, not just email. 00:13:24.044 --> 00:13:24.332 Yeah. 00:13:24.472 --> 00:13:31.508 And what's Crazy to me about it is I think, perhaps you have an assistant, but I don't know, maybe

you're working so much of this by yourself, right? 00:13:31.836 --> 00:13:38.931 And so just the sheer volume of that, even looking at your notes and sources in the back, I'm like, there's so much. 00:13:39.323 --> 00:13:41.980 I don't know how you didn't get completely overwhelmed at times. 00:13:42.128 --> 00:13:43.976 I mean, I did, to be clear. 00:13:44.937 --> 00:13:44.979 Hmm. 00:13:45.573 --> 00:13:45.868 Yeah. 00:13:45.868 --> 00:13:57.548 I mean, the, the, the volume of, of reporting and research was, was quite substantial, and in some ways it was really Beginning with the article was really helpful in that sense because I knew, I was like,"Okay, I'm writing a 7,000-word magazine piece. 00:13:57.581 --> 00:13:58.438 I know how to do that. 00:13:58.491 --> 00:14:03.798 I can do that." The, the kind of reporting required for that is, is something, uh, that feels approachable. 00:14:04.303 --> 00:14:09.980 And so by the time I began working on a book proposal, I had, you know, a year and a half, two years or something like, I'm forgetting what exactly. 00:14:10.214 --> 00:14:11.587 I had a lot of reporting. 00:14:11.649 --> 00:14:14.192 I had already put that into the bucket, you know? 00:14:14.250 --> 00:14:17.183 And so I wasn't starting from zero, and so it wasn't quite so intimidating. 00:14:17.191 --> 00:14:29.731 But yes, it was extraordinarily intimidating to just think like,"Oh, okay, I'm writing this book about this group which had dozens of members and, like, gazillion crimes, and oh, by the way, it's also a story about the history of American religion," 00:14:29.765 --> 00:14:30.335 you know? 00:14:30.389 --> 00:14:33.485 Which is quite a large topic, and just, like, extremism. 00:14:33.711 --> 00:14:40.576 I will say the thing that was actually the most intimidating, it wasn't so much the travel or the interpersonal interviews or even the reading for the history. 00:14:40.995 --> 00:14:42.716 It was the legal stuff. 00:14:42.778 --> 00:14:51.375 Just to back up a little bit, the, the climax of the book i- is a, is a trial, and I mean, I don't think that's giving too much away because the subtitle is The Rise and Fall of an American Cult. 00:14:51.386 --> 00:15:03.869 So there, so the, the legal cases, frankly, were extraordinarily complicated, and there were, like, tens upon tens of thousands of pages of legal documents I both got from, from sources, from, from public records, et cetera, all that kind of stuff. 00:15:03.953 --> 00:15:13.669 And so just kind of making sense of that, just finding a way in, finding the necessary material without getting bogged down and spending five years or whatever flipping through these pages, that was quite hard. 00:15:13.669 --> 00:15:14.384 You know, I'm not a lawyer. 00:15:14.384 --> 00:15:15.539 I don't have a legal background. 00:15:15.541 --> 00:15:22.553 And so it was also just trying to figure out what is the vocabulary of The system, you know, how does it all kind of work? 00:15:22.793

--> 00:15:31.279 And the other thing I, uh, related to that I should mention is that I, I think that there were a lot of problems and errors in how this, this group was pursued by the law. 00:15:31.302 --> 00:15:36.618 And so you have to come to a certain level of fluency to be able to actually criticize something, you know what I mean? 00:15:36.826 --> 00:15:36.910 Interesting. 00:15:36.910 --> 00:15:40.302 You can't just be like,"That's bad." You know, you have to really know the material. 00:15:40.813 --> 00:15:43.041 And so I spent a great deal of time in the material. 00:15:43.113 --> 00:15:57.600 Related to that, actually, I was saying this just to someone the other day, I think that there's a world where someone writing this kind of book might today take all those legal documents and just, like, dump them into ChatGPT and be like,"Summarize this for me." And I suppose that someone could find that useful. 00:15:57.759 --> 00:16:13.528 For me, that's just not I, I think that actually being in the documents and s- doing the slog, you actually get a sense of the texture and the, the surprise and just the, the humanity and life of the material that I just don't think you could. 00:16:13.528 --> 00:16:24.852 I mean, I was hearing someone talk about this the other day, that they just, like, dumped a bunch of material on ChatGPT to help them summarize, and I thought,"Okay, I guess that could be helpful." But again, I don't think that that would serve a, a project like this. 00:16:25.663 --> 00:16:28.090 The other thing was just sort of questions of liability. 00:16:28.533 --> 00:16:28.735 Yeah. 00:16:28.739 --> 00:16:35.495 You know, because there are some really horrific crimes that are committed in this book, and I'm stating that really publicly. 00:16:35.498 --> 00:16:42.986 Yeah, and I, I tried to be really careful about it because I, I don't wanna say things that are untrue about people o- in print. 00:16:43.014 --> 00:16:46.082 And so the book was very thoroughly fact-checked. 00:16:46.203 --> 00:16:47.812 That took place over a couple months. 00:16:48.144 --> 00:16:53.206 An extraordinary fact-checker named Julie Tate, who I hired, who was just the best. 00:16:53.381 --> 00:16:55.765 She went through everything and gave it a really thorough fact check. 00:16:55.788 --> 00:17:08.788 And then the lawyer at Scribner and Simon Schuster, he was amazing, and, and just we spent two days on the phone, if I'm remembering correctly, just walking through all this material and just sort of talking about,"Where did you get this? 00:17:08.804 --> 00:17:12.645 How did y- how can you back it up?" And all those kinda things like that. 00:17:12.724 --> 00:17:14.342 And that was really interesting. 00:17:14.353 --> 00:17:15.800 It was a little nerve-wracking. 00:17:15.886 --> 00:17:17.527 You know, am I, am I covered in all these ways? 00:17:17.527 --> 00:17:18.718 And of course, I certainly was. 00:17:18.969 --> 00:17:25.272 But the other part of it that was, that was quite, quite interesting was that, you know, the book came out in the UK as well. 00:17:25.276 --> 00:17:25.286 Wow. 00:17:25.311 --> 00:17:28.973 And their laws around free speech are, are quite different than ours are. 00:17:28.980 --> 00:17:29.008 Oh, wow. 00:17:29.018 --> 00:17:37.500 And so we actually had to cut some material for the UK version because of certain laws about what you're about to say about victims of certain crimes. 00:17:37.541 --> 00:17:42.047 And you know, these are not meaningful cuts, but they, they, they did happen. 00:17:42.192 --> 00:17:44.798 In your own life, were you somebody who was interested in cults? 00:17:44.800 --> 00:17:46.175 Is that something that fascinated you? 00:17:46.175 --> 00:17:47.428 Is it something you ever thought about? 00:17:47.912 --> 00:17:48.335 No. 00:17:49.038 --> 00:17:49.448 Wow, 00:17:49.448 --> 00:17:49.708 okay. 00:17:49.708 --> 00:17:51.013 To be totally honest, no, not at all. 00:17:51.122 --> 00:17:57.741 I think to some extent that was actually helpful to me as a writer because I was coming in like a reader, like a general reader might come in. 00:17:57.741 --> 00:17:57.905 Yeah. 00:17:57.905 --> 00:18:01.798 And so I knew I had a sense of what are the bigger questions someone like that might have. 00:18:01.827 --> 00:18:03.443 But of course, this book is about a cult. 00:18:03.482 --> 00:18:04.924 That's the central story. 00:18:04.965 --> 00:18:07.993 You'll laugh, but I never really thought of it that way. 00:18:08.034 --> 00:18:13.852 I always thought of it as a story about a really intense, remarkable, kind of insane family. 00:18:14.721 --> 00:18:25.162 The cult began as just four people, which is to say the husband and wife that, that began it, and the daughter and the son who were part of it from the very beginning. 00:18:25.586 --> 00:18:46.384 I felt like by looking at this family, a, a family that just, uh, their, their dynamics were just at the most extreme version of what something like this could be, that that extremity might help reveal something more universal about families that are not so extreme, not so nutty, not so criminal in behavior. 00:18:46.431 --> 00:18:51.321 I will say, though, I'm quite interested in religion, and that's been an important part of my life in many different ways. 00:18:51.715 --> 00:18:57.407 And so I think I came at it The, the kind of historical and, and religious and, and cultish material. 00:18:57.407 --> 00:19:04.711 I came at, I came at it from that side rather than from the kind of, like, true crime, potentially exploitative, sensationalist perspective. 00:19:04.804 --> 00:19:19.064 Part of the work of the book that I was trying to do was to so- sort of show that, yes, there's a lot that's crazy about these kind of groups, but it's not entirely crazy and that there is this real actual connection to and continuity with more mainstream religious practice. 00:19:19.065 --> 00:19:27.066 And I don't say that to, to

malign or denigrate mainstream religious practice at all, only to say that the division between those two can be quite porous. 00:19:27.093 --> 00:19:33.394 And so when I say I wasn't interested in cults going into this project, there's an element of that that, that, that's true. 00:19:33.394 --> 00:19:35.325 You know, I'd never read about Jim Jones or whatever. 00:19:35.715 --> 00:19:42.355 But I very much was interested in faith and belief and belonging and all these things that are, that are central to, to religion. 00:19:42.384 --> 00:19:44.351 And so that is an interest in cults. 00:19:44.351 --> 00:19:46.355 You know, those are the things that are going on in cults as well. 00:19:47.010 --> 00:20:02.178 It's funny'cause I was thinking, first of all, It was so kind of cool driving down from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California In the midst of all this, where all of these things were taking place, like Sacramento and all these places that were being talked about, just the proliferation of cults in California alone. 00:20:02.582 --> 00:20:03.117 But- Yeah. 00:20:03.359 --> 00:20:04.487 Cultifornia, as some people 00:20:04.489 --> 00:20:04.723 call it. 00:20:04.723 --> 00:20:05.556 Cultifornia, yeah. 00:20:05.615 --> 00:20:11.212 But I grew up in that time of which a lot of this gets addressed in the book, I'm talking about it. 00:20:11.259 --> 00:20:20.759 You know, I remember being a little kid and the Charles Manson murders happening and not knowing anything about it except Helter Skelter, the book coming out. 00:20:21.088 --> 00:20:29.144 But I remember the Satanic panic you talk about in the book, which was this time period, and the McMartin trials, all of that kind of stuff. 00:20:29.185 --> 00:20:35.682 I remember growing up, and there was this sense of doom out there that this could happen to you. 00:20:35.883 --> 00:20:49.148 And it wasn't just necessarily or only that you could get pulled into a cult, but I think as a young person, it was more that something would happen to you if you didn't kind of follow the straight and narrow. 00:20:49.202 --> 00:20:56.874 I think it just rooted for me, and I think for a lot of people, it, it started this fascination of what goes on here. 00:20:56.875 --> 00:21:01.666 And also I'm so curious your thoughts on this, about what is it that you think really draws people to them? 00:21:01.667 --> 00:21:14.272 Because Reading your research of the book and seeing that there isn't one kind of central thing that puts people in it, I, I'm so curious, what is it you think that pulls them in? 00:21:14.272 --> 00:21:18.788 That's interesting to people, that pulls in sort of consumers of culture, you mean? 00:21:18.788 --> 00:21:19.047 Yes. 00:21:19.065 --> 00:21:19.886 Or, or people into- 00:21:19.890 --> 00:21:22.162 I, I, I, and both sides of it, I guess. 00:21:22.190 --> 00:21:22.761 Both, yeah. 00:21:22.972 --> 00:21:27.222 I mean, I'll start with the culture side of it because I find that especially, uh, interesting. 00:21:27.298 --> 00:21:36.634 I, I mean, I think that there's a real appeal in being close to something kind of dangerous, but not actually giving into it. 00:21:36.634 --> 00:21:39.064 I mean, I think about, like, going on a rollercoaster or something. 00:21:39.073 --> 00:21:42.435 The fun there is in this danger in the midst of safety. 00:21:42.493 --> 00:21:45.441 I think that that is, is, like, exciting. 00:21:45.460 --> 00:21:51.644 You know, if you go to a movie theater and it's a horror film, film, and you scream, you know, that's, that's fun because you're scared, but you're also safe. 00:21:52.010 --> 00:21:53.634 And so literature would do the same thing. 00:21:54.165 --> 00:22:03.500 I also think that there can be a kind of comfort in reading about people who are doing something that's, like, really wild and, um, like, a little bit, you know, dangerous and criminal or whatever. 00:22:03.567 --> 00:22:06.226 There's this comfort of feeling like,"Oh, well, that's not me," you know. 00:22:06.226 --> 00:22:10.766 Like, at least, you know, my life might be a little bit wild, but it's not as wild as that. 00:22:11.180 --> 00:22:19.685 Though I will say part of what I was trying to communicate in this book is that there is more overlap than maybe we would like to think, so maybe that's not, that's not an entirely warranted comfort. 00:22:19.810 --> 00:22:25.488 I also think there's a real kind of-- Cults often have a real narrative component to them. 00:22:25.511 --> 00:22:38.946 There's-- I think they really suit themselves to books or movies or podcasts or whatever because there c- there's a very clear beginning, there's often a clear middle, and h- you know, hopefully, there's a clear ending. 00:22:39.478 --> 00:22:42.207 And the characters are great, you know. 00:22:42.211 --> 00:22:43.625 They're, they're wild. 00:22:43.634 --> 00:22:45.671 They want something desperately. 00:22:45.672 --> 00:22:51.894 You know, I think that good art is about people who are-- want something really badly and fight really hard to get it. 00:22:52.165 --> 00:23:01.997 In the case of this book, you know, Deborah Green, the leader of this cult, she believed herself to be a prophet, and she wanted to usher in, you know, an era of righteousness on the face of the Earth through, through God. 00:23:01.997 --> 00:23:06.340 I mean, that kind of objective or desire doesn't get any bigger than that. 00:23:06.351 --> 00:23:11.753 And so I think that's part of what makes these stories work in a narrative sense. 00:23:11.857 --> 00:23:18.901 And then in terms of why do people just join cults, it's for many reasons that I won't, I won't list them all because they're, they're all in the book. 00:23:18.902 --> 00:23:20.932 But obviously, there's stuff about belonging. 00:23:20.934 --> 00:23:25.471 People want, people want a place to have community, to have a kind of shared common purpose. 00:23:25.499 --> 00:23:27.075 People want religious

fulfillment. 00:23:27.076 --> 00:23:30.130 They want to have some spiritual foundation to their lives. 00:23:30.199 --> 00:23:41.324 There's also real material things that are, that draw people into cults, you know If you don't have a job, if you don't have a lot of money, joining a cult can give you a job. 00:23:41.325 --> 00:23:58.810 It can give you clothing and food and childcare and, you know, in a country like the US that doesn't have an especially strong social safety net, some people sort of theorize that it is that lack of a social safety net that can help explain at least some part of the proliferation of these kind of groups in the US. 00:23:58.843 --> 00:24:01.895 I think there's more going on there, but that's a little bit part of it. 00:24:02.301 --> 00:24:13.384 I find it so fascinating with so many of these cults in the whole kind of movement, if we call it a movement, the kind of arc of them all seems to start with such a kind of pure intentions at the beginning of it. 00:24:13.384 --> 00:24:13.394 Mm-hmm. 00:24:13.394 --> 00:24:14.183 They really do. 00:24:14.336 --> 00:24:14.588 For sure. 00:24:14.589 --> 00:24:15.961 And how quickly they descend. 00:24:16.009 --> 00:24:42.944 Bridging of religion and sex, that's one of the things that how those intersect so quickly and how, uh, kind of a moral structure kind of goes out the window and what gets accepted and is thought just to be acceptable I don't know, and I know this was part of what you were getting at as we get through the book, but talking about not only the rise of Christian fundamentalism, but certainly what we've witnessed over the past ten years with kind of Trumpism. 00:24:42.990 --> 00:24:43.560 Mm-hmm. 00:24:43.560 --> 00:24:46.404 And I thought about this book a lot on election night. 00:24:46.463 --> 00:24:46.548 Mm. 00:24:46.548 --> 00:24:55.058 Because I think for a lot of people, feeling like this moment could be the start of collectively breaking out of what we've all kind of been in. 00:24:55.151 --> 00:24:59.088 But for a lot of people to kind of see the light, I guess. 00:24:59.181 --> 00:24:59.587 Mm-hmm. 00:24:59.767 --> 00:25:00.046 Mm-hmm. 00:25:00.106 --> 00:25:01.065 Yeah, yeah. 00:25:01.242 --> 00:25:01.865 That's interesting. 00:25:01.865 --> 00:25:07.356 I, I'm so glad, I guess, that, that, that the book, uh, came to you on election night. 00:25:07.545 --> 00:25:30.470 But I do think, you know, you're talking about this whole rise of Christian fundamentalism that has been going on, and I'm so curious about your thoughts because one of the statistics that kind of blew me away that, that you say in the 1990s, the number of private militia groups, gun cults really, exploded with an estimated nine hundred groups with more than forty thousand followers. 00:25:31.166 --> 00:25:31.195 Mm-hmm. 00:25:31.205 --> 00:25:40.287 And I wonder what those numbers are now in light of the fact- Yeah how social media connects us in ways that it never did before. 00:25:40.287 --> 00:25:40.307 For sure. 00:25:40.875 --> 00:25:41.181 Yeah. 00:25:41.181 --> 00:25:45.122 And there's, there's a lot-- I mean, yeah, I, I would wonder what that number is too. 00:25:45.170 --> 00:25:52.005 And the question of the internet and social media, that really complicates the, this idea of, like, what is a cult in some sort of interesting ways. 00:25:52.008 --> 00:26:02.445 Because traditionally, a cult would be defined by a, a number of, of qualifiers, one of which, to me at least, has always been a kind of confined physical space. 00:26:02.472 --> 00:26:04.902 People are in each other's spaces. 00:26:04.913 --> 00:26:08.066 The internet, though, complicates that because, of course, people are not in the same space. 00:26:08.067 --> 00:26:09.566 They're connected digitally. 00:26:10.083 --> 00:26:19.618 Does that mean that somebody who is being drawn into a certain kind of extremism that we might recognize as something that's kind of cultish, does that mean that it isn't a cult? 00:26:19.647 --> 00:26:27.242 Or does it mean that it is and we have to just find a new definition of cult to be more elastic, or do we need a new word? 00:26:27.285 --> 00:26:28.989 Um, yeah, it's all kind of interesting. 00:26:29.011 --> 00:26:31.553 Is there anything that surprised you when you were investigating all this? 00:26:32.137 --> 00:26:32.795 Oh, gosh. 00:26:33.425 --> 00:26:37.374 I can't think of anything off the top of my head, except-- Here's what I'll say. 00:26:37.621 --> 00:26:46.868 You know, this isn't a kind of fact, but I think something that surprised me creatively working on this was how much I enjoyed it. 00:26:47.500 --> 00:26:53.029 Um- Again, I think you maybe had in mind, like, you know, how many cults were in New Mexico or whatever. 00:26:53.239 --> 00:27:11.653 But the real, yeah, the real s- not surprise, but the sort of delight, the wonderful thing that I found, you know, as I got into it, as I continue, is that the, the creative work of it was just really satisfying and there were very difficult parts, but I was able to really take a great amount of pleasure in the process and that was key to me actually. 00:27:11.653 --> 00:27:19.163 I had a kind of realization when I was midway through the book, when I was sort of stuck at a certain part of it, that I should just write towards my own pleasure. 00:27:19.164 --> 00:27:28.095 I should write the parts of the book that I think would be fun to write and that in so doing that I could create a project that would be fun and interesting to the reader as well. 00:27:28.202 --> 00:27:35.054 Is there anyone, any of the kind of players in the book that you wish that you could have sat down with that you didn't get to? 00:27:36.013 --> 00:27:36.397 Yeah. 00:27:36.398 --> 00:27:46.328 I mean, I wish I'd been able to speak with Jim and Deborah Green, the two founders of the cult and the mother and father of Sarah Green, the Oracle's daughter, the woman whose face is on the

cover of the book. 00:27:47.134 --> 00:27:50.681 I corresponded by mail with Jim for a little while. 00:27:50.692 --> 00:27:52.675 We sort of had tentative plans to speak. 00:27:52.679 --> 00:27:55.016 He ultimately decided not to speak with me. 00:27:55.209 --> 00:28:04.310 And I communicated with Deborah's lawyers a little bit in twenty twenty-one prior to the publication of the article that I wrote about the group for The Cut. 00:28:04.516 --> 00:28:07.500 And subsequent to that, they did not speak with me. 00:28:07.509 --> 00:28:12.123 I mean, I, I communicated with the lawyers and ultimately they said no, Deborah would not speak with me. 00:28:12.521 --> 00:28:23.565 And then when I started writing the book, I reached out again, and I reached out many, many times in the years that followed, but she never replied, which is certainly her right, but it would've been really amazing to hear her s- perspective as well. 00:28:23.578 --> 00:28:29.838 That said, you know, this is a woman who I know to be just inveterate liar, just somebody who really is manipulative and- Perilous to the truth. 00:28:30.121 --> 00:28:32.921 Yeah, and does not, does-- is not, is not best friends with the truth. 00:28:33.266 --> 00:28:42.587 And so I think it would've been quite interesting and perhaps revealing in some ways, but I think I would have to be very credulous in kind of thinking about and using what she said. 00:28:42.961 --> 00:28:46.156 You know, she had a lot of writings that she published online. 00:28:46.450 --> 00:29:00.535 This is a really wonderful thing about writing about a cult because they have to evangelize, they have to get their message out and so this group has like hundreds of sermons online, thousands of pages of evangelizing materials, many of which have biographical content in them. 00:29:00.536 --> 00:29:02.545 So I was able to get a lot of material there. 00:29:02.586 --> 00:29:05.281 But yeah, I wish I'd, I wish I'd gotten to speak with Deborah. 00:29:05.324 --> 00:29:11.451 I'm especially interested to speak with her now because of some developments that have taken place legally over the past year. 00:29:11.486 --> 00:29:17.708 And see, I'm one of those people that was poring through the internet because I wanted a visual of all these people. 00:29:17.722 --> 00:29:22.064 Deborah in particular, it's fascinating because you see the young picture of her. 00:29:22.615 --> 00:29:22.855 Right. 00:29:22.866 --> 00:29:26.491 And that evolution is startling. 00:29:26.934 --> 00:29:27.508 Um- 00:29:27.766 --> 00:29:28.070 Right. 00:29:28.153 --> 00:29:31.482 And kind of how very handsome he was, Jim was. 00:29:31.528 --> 00:29:35.282 I mean, they were this very, like, attractive couple and, 00:29:35.282 --> 00:29:36.108 um- Very physically attractive. 00:29:36.109 --> 00:29:37.136 Yeah, that was part of their appeal. 00:29:37.136 --> 00:29:37.146 Yeah. 00:29:37.148 --> 00:29:37.832 It really was. 00:29:37.853 --> 00:29:45.455 Just you mentioned, the way that sex plays a part in this story, and I actually think that this, what you're talking about here, the, the physical appeal of these people. 00:29:45.874 --> 00:29:53.262 Again, you know, Sara would always tell me that a lot of men joined because they found Deborah to be just incredibly beautiful, and she was quite beautiful. 00:29:53.471 --> 00:30:11.163 It is one of these books and one of these stories that at times you're so frustrated and angry for some of the people in the book, including Sara, including Maura, but also asking yourself,"What would I do in that situation?" And of course, I think many people would feel like,"Well, I'd get out of it. 00:30:11.163 --> 00:30:15.104 I don't understand why they just didn't walk away," without really understanding. 00:30:15.118 --> 00:30:16.540 You know, easier said than done, right? 00:30:16.627 --> 00:30:28.977 And I think of so much of Maura's story in particular and the relationships she had with Deborah and with Jim previous to this exploding into what it was and the closeness that they felt. 00:30:29.055 --> 00:30:35.453 It's a little bit like the lobster in the pot who just doesn't- Right feel the heat turning up, and then it's too late. 00:30:35.473 --> 00:30:35.523 Absolutely. 00:30:35.551 --> 00:30:37.759 Yeah, I mean, they always say nobody joins a cult. 00:30:37.781 --> 00:30:51.618 They join what they think is, like, a kind of especially devoted religious group, and it's only by gradually becoming more and more enmeshed in the group that the level of abuse or intimidation or something really reveals itself. 00:30:51.618 --> 00:31:01.727 And by that point, you've maybe abandoned so much of your life on the outside world that it becomes much harder to think about returning to the life that you once had. 00:31:01.728 --> 00:31:07.410 I mean, maybe you, you cut off your family, maybe you, you quit your job, maybe you gave all your money to the leaders of the group. 00:31:07.434 --> 00:31:09.449 Maybe you don't have a place to live anymore. 00:31:10.365 --> 00:31:15.326 Your entire identity at this point is pinned to this, to this group. 00:31:15.371 --> 00:31:23.478 And so it becomes that much more difficult to not only actually leave, but to even imagine what it would be like to leave. 00:31:23.782 --> 00:31:32.330 If you can't think about, you know,"Where would I go the first night that I leave?" If you don't really have an answer for that, that, that's, it's quite intimidating. 00:31:33.070 --> 00:31:41.469 Yeah, and that part of the book- resonated with me so much and what it means for so many people reestablishing themselves in life. 00:31:41.486 --> 00:31:41.638 Yeah. 00:31:41.638 --> 00:31:54.278 What people are eating and what people are doing and what people are talking about and, and what any of it means, and to be in a place where you are so cut off from everyone except for the people around you disseminating the information to you. 00:31:54.509 -->

00:31:56.403 I don't know, my mind is kind of blown by that whole thing. 00:31:56.423 --> 00:32:01.479 And I think people reading this will-- I think it should make you question, what would I do in that situation? 00:32:01.479 --> 00:32:03.028 Would I get pulled into that situation? 00:32:03.032 --> 00:32:03.048 Mm-hmm. 00:32:03.048 --> 00:32:04.605 How would I cope in that situation? 00:32:04.644 --> 00:32:11.438 The epigraph for the book is this William James quote from his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, which is an extraordinary book. 00:32:11.872 --> 00:32:21.161 But the quote is,"The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates." This idea that we're, we're basically made of the same stuff. 00:32:21.854 --> 00:32:35.099 And so I hope that the book helps people kind of feel the, what it i-- what the, what it is that the characters who were enmeshed in this cult felt, which is to say they felt like they couldn't leave in many cases. 00:32:35.212 --> 00:32:40.157 Um, hopefully, the book mimics a version of that, so you, you kind of understand that. 00:32:40.785 --> 00:32:56.230 I think that there are particular challenges for parents, and more specifically mothers who are in these kind of groups, because it's not just a question of them leaving, it's also a question of Okay, my two, three, four, whatever children, uh, h-how would, how am I gonna, what am I gonna do about them? 00:32:56.240 --> 00:32:57.278 Am I gonna bring them with me? 00:32:57.282 --> 00:32:59.160 Am I gonna leave them here? 00:32:59.272 --> 00:33:05.732 How am I physically gonna get off of this location without alerting the leaders of, of a group? 00:33:05.778 --> 00:33:11.108 Uh, you know, that, that I, that I'm leaving with, like, four children in tow, children who might be making noise. 00:33:11.198 --> 00:33:14.537 And then there's just all these, like, practical challenges as well. 00:33:14.537 --> 00:33:19.240 You know, it's hard enough to start a new life in the world as one person. 00:33:19.240 --> 00:33:23.703 It's certainly much harder to begin if you have a caravan of children with you. 00:33:24.364 --> 00:33:29.913 This is a conundrum that Sarah faced in this book, which is in some ways sort of the central conundrum. 00:33:29.977 --> 00:33:34.988 At the beginning of the book, the very, very beginning, and I'm not giving anything away because this is literally in the first four pages of the book. 00:33:35.519 --> 00:33:45.332 The beginning i- is in nineteen ninety-nine when twenty-six-year-old Sarah decides she has to get out of this group, which at this point is based way, way, way in the rural New Mexico desert. 00:33:45.339 --> 00:33:51.035 And so she pulls herself out of her sleeping bag, grabs a backpack, and runs away with another member. 00:33:51.068 --> 00:34:04.317 She decides to leave her three children behind, and that was a really difficult and agonizing decision for her, and one that she ultimately chose because

she felt like, you know,"I can't begin in the outside world with these three children. 00:34:04.327 --> 00:34:05.704 I have to get settled. 00:34:05.708 --> 00:34:06.819 I have to get established. 00:34:06.894 --> 00:34:13.885 I'll come back for them later, and, you know, in the meantime, I'll just figure things out on my own." Of course, reality was a little bit different. 00:34:13.896 --> 00:34:18.567 I won't say more about that, but the fact of the children was, was enormously complicating. 00:34:18.581 --> 00:34:24.666 And it was also in some ways actually motivating for her because she wanted to have a better life for those children. 00:34:24.717 --> 00:34:30.639 It was by seeing how they were mistreated that she was in some ways able to see how she and other members were mistreated. 00:34:31.204 --> 00:34:48.231 That's something that's consistent with other people's experiences in cults, specifically mothers, that it is by witnessing what their children go-- are going through that they can recognize,"Oh, maybe what I'm going through is not so great either." You know, the people can be okay with their own suffering, but they're not suff-- they're not okay with the suffering of their children. 00:34:48.322 --> 00:34:53.639 And so they have what's called an escape hatch relationship with those kids. 00:34:53.706 --> 00:34:59.976 Those kids provide something that is not oriented exclusively around the leader or the doctrine of the cult. 00:35:00.036 --> 00:35:02.568 It gives them a little window out, and they are able to get out. 00:35:02.603 --> 00:35:10.431 That's a term I should give credit to this, um, writer, Alexandra Stein, who has an extraordinary book called Terror, Love and Brainwashing that, that gets into all this stuff 00:35:12.266 --> 00:35:13.518 The story's fascinating. 00:35:13.547 --> 00:35:16.748 I don't really wanna get too much into more of it because I don't- 00:35:17.108 --> 00:35:17.773 Yeah, no, for sure 00:35:17.773 --> 00:35:18.545 I don't wanna ruin. 00:35:18.545 --> 00:35:25.978 There's a whole sequence with Sarah that is so incredible where she goes overseas that I don't wanna talk about at all, but I do wanna talk about. 00:35:26.003 --> 00:35:26.288 Yeah. 00:35:26.813 --> 00:35:35.641 But I don't wanna talk about because people really need to experience that and the reasons why and what ultimately becomes of that, which is just unbelievable. 00:35:35.679 --> 00:35:36.836 The book is fantastic. 00:35:36.855 --> 00:35:37.349 It's amazing. 00:35:37.429 --> 00:35:38.983 I can't say enough good things about it. 00:35:39.023 --> 00:35:45.231 Um, al- also it's not lost on me that this is Nonfiction November in the book world, so if you are looking for- Oh, is it? 00:35:45.335 --> 00:35:46.556 If this is nonfiction- I didn't know 00:35:46.731 --> 00:35:47.775 such a thing existed. 00:35:47.775 --> 00:35:48.757 Well, happy Nonfiction 00:35:48.757 --> 00:35:49.048 November. 00:35:49.048 --> 00:35:53.632 Yeah, maybe that's only in the Bookstagram world, but for, for everybody out there, yeah, Nonfiction November they call it. 00:35:53.655 --> 00:35:59.784 So if anyone's looking for a fantastic nonfiction book, please, please, please check this out and buy independent if you can. 00:35:59.784 --> 00:36:02.224 But Harrison, um, it's such a pleasure. 00:36:02.224 --> 00:36:06.278 I'm so excited to see what your next subject is going to be. 00:36:06.576 --> 00:36:07.235 Yeah, yeah. 00:36:07.463 --> 00:36:08.918 Nothing to do with cults. 00:36:08.918 --> 00:36:09.983 No more cults. 00:36:10.045 --> 00:36:10.693 Yeah, exactly. 00:36:10.706 --> 00:36:11.326 That's all I'll say. 00:36:11.326 --> 00:36:12.280 You're culted out for the moment. 00:36:13.193 --> 00:36:14.983 I've said everything I have to say about them. 00:36:15.985 --> 00:36:17.414 Well, thank you so much for being here. 00:36:17.414 --> 00:36:18.306 I really appreciate it. 00:36:18.315 --> 00:36:19.050 Thank you so much, Brett. 00:36:19.061 --> 00:36:19.568 A real treat. 00:36:21.913 --> 00:36:22.905 Thank you again, Harrison. 00:36:23.335 --> 00:36:30.409 If you've liked this conversation or other conversations that you've heard on Behind the Stack, please consider liking and subscribing so that you never miss an episode. 00:36:30.878 --> 00:36:49.463 And if you have the time, what would be really helpful to me is if you can give this show five stars on your podcast platform of choice I will be back next week with another episode, and until then, you can always find me on Instagram, Substack, and YouTube at Brett's Book Stack. 00:36:49.980 --> 00:36:52.224 And as always, thanks for listening