April 24, 2022
Today we interview Marcia and Riley (AKA Jexit) about falling in love with someone who was a member of a cult and still in the process of deconstructing, or as ex JWs call it POMI (Physically Out Mentally In).
Riley is an ex Jehovah's Witness You-tuber who talks about his experiences leaving the Group. We've discussed the difficulties of relationships, love and sex for ex members of cults in previous episodes, but today we wanted to look at it from the other perspective. What's it like to meet and date someone who was in a cult? What are the potential difficulties and peculiarities? Stephen spoke to the newly weds on holiday in Paris.
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![Making Sense of an Abnormal Normal: Life in the Children of God]()
April 10, 2022
Author, Mary Mahoney talks about her 31 years in the Children of God. She tells Celine and Stephen about her life as a young woman, believing she was called by God to missionary service, her travels around the world and her efforts to obey increasingly dark and exploitative demands by the Group. She explains the implications of leader David Berg's bizarre doctrine on the 'law of love', the use of sex to recruit known as 'flirty fishing' and the demands of 'sharing' within the commune. She also discusses the experience of having children and raising them within the group. Mary is a wonderful guest and her story is sometimes difficult to hear but her resilience is truly inspirational.
Mary's Book, Abnormal Normal, My Life in the Children of God
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54177523-abnormal-normal
Mary's Blog on Medium
https://medium.com/@mary-mahoney
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Episode Index
https://www.evilsheep.co.uk/whatshouldithinkabout
April 6, 2022
As if this world isn't confusing enough, today Celine and Stephen explore virtual worlds and our seemingly unavoidable destiny with them. From Zoom to Second Life, from Virtual Reality to Web 3.0, NFTs, Crypto and even whether we are already living in a simulated reality! On top of all of that Stephen explains what actors named Chris have to do with Non Fungible Tokens! Oh and Virtual Cults..
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April 3, 2022
Becky Armstrong-Corbett is a qualified psychotherapist and solution focused clinical hypnotherapist. Raised as a Jehovah's Witness she was sexually abused by a member of the congregation as a child and has since worked to raise awareness of neglectful practices within this and other organizations. She contributed to the work of the Inquiry Into Child Sex Abuse in the UK and has appeared on a number of news programmes and media to talk about this important subject. Becky talks to us about this and how she has made a life for herself outside the group becoming a professional psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. Becky also explains what hypnotherapy is and how it works.
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Becky's Website
https://beckycorbett.com/
Becky's YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=becky+armstrong-corbett
March 27, 2022
Daniel O'Brien is an educator, musician and ex Jehovah's Witness elder. He talks to Stephen about his experience being recruited into the organization and his tough journey out. He also talks about his upcoming lecture at the 2022 International Cultic Studies Association Conference.
Daniel's Essay - Are Religious people happier?
International Cultic Studies Association Conference 2022
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March 23, 2022
As it's Stephen's birthday today , 'birthdays' is the theme of this week's chat. As a Jehovah's Witness child, birthday celebrations were something alien to Stephen and so Celine and her dad try to work out why JWs really don't celebrate them. Stephen finds a paper that provides some of the history and the sociological context and he then demonstrates his slow decent into grumpy old man by having a rant about Discord, mid life crises and MAMILs.
Paper discussed: Shoham, H. (2021). It is about time: Birthdays as modern rites of temporality. Time & Society, 30(1), 78-99.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0961463X20955094
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March 19, 2022
Ashlen talks about her experience as a born-in member of a small Christian Fundamentalist group called the Churches of Christ, and her work now as the Director of Events at the International Cultic Studies Association. Ashlen also discusses her own research and her studies with the University of Salford on the psychology of coercive control. Such an interesting discussion.
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Ashlen's recent presentation can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q09fB4YGIlw&t=1145s
March 15, 2022
Riley from the Jexit YouTube channel joins Stephen today to analyse the 2002 movie Equilibrium, directed by Kurt Wimmer, starring Christian Bale, Take Diggs, Sean Bean and Emily Watson.
Giving the movie a cult reading reveals some spine-tingling and remarkable parallels with living in a dystopian state and being in a High Control Group.
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