Speaker 1: Mmm, hello friends, I'm Robert Evans and this is again
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards. We're doing part two of our series
Speaker 1: on Keith Ranieri, creator of the Nexium sex cult, child molester,
Speaker 1: judo champion and humanitarian. My guest for part two, as
Speaker 1: with part one, is on a Salinas judast comedianist, creative earist.
Speaker 1: Uh So, thank you for joining me again on thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listing all my official titles. Creative earist
Speaker 1: is the one that I'm most proud of. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: could tell that from the business cards. Yeah. Uh so
Speaker 1: we're gonna get Are you excited to get back into
Speaker 1: talking about Keith red deary? I am. I feel like
Speaker 1: we did all this like homework to get up to
Speaker 1: the juiciest part. Oh boy, I mean it's been juicy.
Speaker 1: It's been juicy, but well it's crazy to say it's
Speaker 1: been tamed because he's been molesting left and right, three women. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's he's sexually assaulted three children, and he's built his call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to know that crazy stuff. It
Speaker 1: did well buckle up. By two three, over thirty seven
Speaker 1: people had enrolled in Keith seminars, including some famous Ish people,
Speaker 1: the co founder of b ET, a former U S
Speaker 1: Surgeon General, the daughter of one Mexican president, and the
Speaker 1: son of another for whatever reason, a lot of success
Speaker 1: with the children of Mexican presidents. Keith Neary was good
Speaker 1: at that. The young female heirs to the Seagram's vodka
Speaker 1: fortune were also big fans of his his work, as
Speaker 1: well as Steven Cooper, the acting chief executive of Enron.
Speaker 1: Uh whoa, yeah, it's her huge get. There's some big
Speaker 1: gets in there. Although two thousand three is not the
Speaker 1: best year to have the CEO of It's not it's not.
Speaker 1: But the son and daughter of a Mexican president, two
Speaker 1: different Mexican presidents, two different ones. Yeah, yeah, one of
Speaker 1: them is the daughter Vincent A. Fox and the other
Speaker 1: his name was Selina's. I'm not great, Carlos Selena, Carlos Salinas.
Speaker 1: I should know that because Selinas is my last name.
Speaker 1: I know Vincent A. Fox really well, because he has
Speaker 1: probably the best name of any president. Fantastic name and
Speaker 1: a vocal antagonist Trump. Yeah, he's He's definitely been a
Speaker 1: big daughter was in this cult that's huge. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so I want to be fair to the people who
Speaker 1: remembers this. When I say that these were enrolled in
Speaker 1: his seminars, This isn't the same as like being a
Speaker 1: scientologist or in the Heaven's Gate. These people are spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money. They probably think Keith's great. They
Speaker 1: may have bought into some aspects of it, but they're
Speaker 1: not worshiping anything, like they're paying into his money schemes.
Speaker 1: So some of these people, like the heirs to the
Speaker 1: Seagram's vodka fortune, this couple of these two sisters, are
Speaker 1: definitely in the cult full on. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's the case with all of these people, And in fact,
Speaker 1: I think for most of them they just treated it
Speaker 1: like a professional development thing and they had money to burn, right,
Speaker 1: they had money to burn. That's still so wild. I mean,
Speaker 1: like he was he was normalized. Yeah, yeah, and he was.
Speaker 1: He didn't have like you'll notice, there's that huge numbers
Speaker 1: of people. I think maybe seventeen thousand people took a
Speaker 1: seminars at the Max. But they're paying a lot of
Speaker 1: money and yeah yeah, and they're doing classes over and
Speaker 1: over again. Um, because that's something he insists, is that
Speaker 1: like if you you got to retake the classes. A
Speaker 1: bunch of times really get the maximum benefit out of
Speaker 1: it does sound like UCB and that sounds uncomfortably similar
Speaker 1: to the Upright Citizens Brigade approach to improv comedy. Well
Speaker 1: what that's what that was co created by? Um? Was
Speaker 1: the lady on thirty Rock a polar? Okay, so maybe
Speaker 1: we'll do an Amy polar episode. Oh god, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be responsible for throwing any pol or under
Speaker 1: the bus. But if you find something. The next time
Speaker 1: you see her, ask how she shakes hands, and then
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what you need to know about whether
Speaker 1: or not she's starting a cult. I will if she
Speaker 1: puts out her right foot and then immediately makes a
Speaker 1: right angle with her thumb. And that's as much as
Speaker 1: I remember. Yeah, though, there's so much to keep track
Speaker 1: of with a handshake kindlines tilted wrist, Yeah that the
Speaker 1: risk tilt about the wrist tilt? Yeah yeah. But anyway,
Speaker 1: two three Keith nar he's doing great. That is the
Speaker 1: same year that a reporter from Forbes asked to interview him.
Speaker 1: He was delighted. Who wouldn't be, You know, that's weird
Speaker 1: having having Forbes he was going to be on the
Speaker 1: cover of Forbes. It's a big that's a big get
Speaker 1: the sort of thing he would make up. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing he would lie about shamelessly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for Keith and Nexingum, the article that ran in
Speaker 1: October two thousand three, titled Cult of Personality was not
Speaker 1: positive towards Forbes. Unfortunately for Keith, were actual journalists, and
Speaker 1: they did some actual journalism. Uh, and they found a
Speaker 1: number of fun things in Keith's past, including an ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend who was in the process of suing him. She
Speaker 1: claims he had harassed her, disrupted her business, and manipulated
Speaker 1: her into giving up her ten year old son to
Speaker 1: the boy's father. This woman, Tony F. Natalie, told Forbes
Speaker 1: that she believed Ranieri brainwashed her, telling her that, you know,
Speaker 1: she had to give up her son to her son's
Speaker 1: father because she was put on earth to carry his
Speaker 1: baby and this was quote the baby who would alter
Speaker 1: the course of history. Um. Now, Rainey called this claim
Speaker 1: ridiculous and not rational, which it's certainly not rational. But
Speaker 1: I'm a hundred percent sure he made this claim Nerve
Speaker 1: based on some stuff that's going to happen next. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: this is not the last time we're gonna hear about
Speaker 1: Keith Ranary trying to steal a baby. No, it really
Speaker 1: has been building in craziness because first she was like, well,
Speaker 1: what if I just like have sex with kids. Now
Speaker 1: it's like or I could make my own or steal them,
Speaker 1: make my own child. Who's going to alter the course
Speaker 1: of history? Yeah? Oh wow? So I mean Forbes runs
Speaker 1: the story and here refused, sit does the company take
Speaker 1: a hit? No? No, no, So we're not even through
Speaker 1: everything that's in the story at this point when Forbes
Speaker 1: Forbes is being legitimate journalists. So they meet this woman
Speaker 1: and she has the story about Keith Raneary trying to
Speaker 1: like manipulate her into giving up her kids so she
Speaker 1: can have another kid for him. And they go to
Speaker 1: Ranieri and they say, these are the allegations someone's making,
Speaker 1: and he refutes it. Um So, the author of the
Speaker 1: Forbes article did spend a lot of time talking to Keith.
Speaker 1: It's clear that Ranieri really played up the enigmatic guru
Speaker 1: portions of his personality while they were together. Here's a
Speaker 1: quote from the article that I think uh presents Keith
Speaker 1: the way that he was trying to present himself for this.
Speaker 1: He has no driver's license, relying on friends for rides
Speaker 1: and walking up to twelve miles a day. He says
Speaker 1: he has no bank account and that he foregoes any
Speaker 1: salary from the four million a year coaching program he created.
Speaker 1: I consider everything payment for what I've done. Though he
Speaker 1: co owns a small home near Albany, New York with
Speaker 1: a female friend, he spends most nights at one or
Speaker 1: another of three friends homes. He claims not to own
Speaker 1: a bed. I live, he says, with a disarmingly warm smile,
Speaker 1: a somewhat church mouse type existence. I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and call out this journalist for saying he had a
Speaker 1: disarmingly charming smile. I think that's probably fair. And you
Speaker 1: saw a little bit of the video. We're gonna watch
Speaker 1: some more later. This is what he's good at. Got
Speaker 1: a good voice. Yeah, And in fairness to the journalists,
Speaker 1: the journalist didn't just take this like he dug up
Speaker 1: a shiploaded dirt on. It's true that the writer was
Speaker 1: just pointing out Keith's good at being charming. He's good, yeah,
Speaker 1: But I don't believe that whole Jesus. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: have money. I don't have a bad thing. He's really
Speaker 1: going for the Jesus e vibe. Yeah, which is smart.
Speaker 1: If you're being accused of things, it's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I misunderstood. So the Forbes article brought more insights into
Speaker 1: Keith Ranieries view of the world. Uh. It revealed that
Speaker 1: he believes most non esp people try to quote destroy
Speaker 1: each other's steel, from each other, down each other, and
Speaker 1: rejoice at another's demise. And so it is essential for
Speaker 1: the survival of humankind that as much money as possible
Speaker 1: be controlled by successful, ethical people like the folks trained
Speaker 1: in his seminars. Uh. Now, the Forbes article may have
Speaker 1: been inspired by someone with an e vendetta. One of
Speaker 1: the article's main anti Nexium sources was a guy named
Speaker 1: Edgar Bronfman, Sr. Former head of the Seagram's company and
Speaker 1: patriarch of the family fortune. Edgar Bronfman's daughters wound up
Speaker 1: being the two big whales of Keith Naris con Man life,
Speaker 1: putting tens of millions of dollars into cays of ventures.
Speaker 1: And these poor girls were definitely in the cult side
Speaker 1: of things. Um. Yeah. Like the now, I don't know
Speaker 1: if he ever did anything on towards with him, but
Speaker 1: he for sure built them out of a fortune. Um,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, so where did all that money go? Well,
Speaker 1: that's what we're about to get into. You have eight
Speaker 1: pages we're about Yeah. Uh ESP next, SAME's particular line
Speaker 1: of bullshit seemed Taylor made to ensnare young, rich, naive people.
Speaker 1: Keith was a big Line Rand fan, so his philosophy
Speaker 1: simultaneously elevated wealth to virtue while also letting people feel
Speaker 1: like they were saving the world just by being rich
Speaker 1: and buying into Keith's bullshit. ESP had a sash ranking
Speaker 1: system where different colors and bands on your sash would
Speaker 1: signify if you were a coach or whatever. So they
Speaker 1: were like sixty total different types of sashes, and by
Speaker 1: going to the same class over and over again and
Speaker 1: going to multiple classes taking you would get better sashes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, similar to u c B. U c B
Speaker 1: is the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. They do a bunch
Speaker 1: of classes on improv and being funny people. Yeah, are
Speaker 1: there sashes? We don't have sashes, but there's levels one
Speaker 1: oh one too oh one three one four oh one
Speaker 1: Advanced Study and then you get on a house team,
Speaker 1: which is like a sash because you get to go
Speaker 1: into shows for free. I Um, I'm on a team there.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time there. But man, if
Speaker 1: there were a checklist of is this a cult? They'd
Speaker 1: be checking off. Those boxes were at like seven out
Speaker 1: of ten. And it's you know, there's a thin line
Speaker 1: between a successful business that relies on repeat customers and
Speaker 1: teaches things and a cult. You're always going to use
Speaker 1: some of the same tactics. Uh. So, you know, they
Speaker 1: had these sashes that had a bunch of ranks, and
Speaker 1: this was like a reward people got for paying an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of money to take classes. And this is
Speaker 1: probably why the programs were so addictive to people like
Speaker 1: the Bronfman sisters. Here's a quote from Sarah Bronfman, uh,
Speaker 1: one of the heirs to the Seagram's vodka fortune. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much you know about my family, but
Speaker 1: coming from a family where I've never had to earn
Speaker 1: anything before in my life, it was a very very
Speaker 1: moving experience for me to be awarded this yellow sash.
Speaker 1: It was the first thing that I had earned on
Speaker 1: just my merits. So keeps making these, you know, young
Speaker 1: women who grew up super rich and for whom money
Speaker 1: isn't really a thing, Like, they don't have a concept
Speaker 1: of money, but they want to feel like they've accomplished something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's giving that them that opportunity. I mean, if
Speaker 1: there's anyone who is an heiress out there listening and
Speaker 1: they want to feel like they've earned something, feel free
Speaker 1: to end Momi any amount of money. She has so
Speaker 1: many sashes for you. Yeah, filthy with I'll make a sash.
Speaker 1: I'll get one on Etsy. It will be hand embroidered.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's Hey, it's smart. The guy I doubted
Speaker 1: his intelligence at the top of them. He is a
Speaker 1: deeply smart man who works in the art of total bullshit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of bilking people out of money. Yeah, that's his genius.
Speaker 1: But his scam wasn't just timelessly ripping off rich families.
Speaker 1: Forbes interviewed former students who reported aspects of the training
Speaker 1: that sounded quite abusive. Um. So to start off here,
Speaker 1: some background. UM. One of the different types of classes
Speaker 1: that you had different courses was just called money. And
Speaker 1: in money, students were taught that every dollar spent represented
Speaker 1: a portion of effort and that quote. Vanguard identified the
Speaker 1: concept of giving and taking with integrity. Coaches were supposed
Speaker 1: to urge students to take each sessions several times at
Speaker 1: a cost of several thousand dollars each. Each dollar spent
Speaker 1: was seen as a representation of the effort they were
Speaker 1: putting into the class and a core piece of the
Speaker 1: program known as exploration of meaning. Teachers are supposed to
Speaker 1: basically get into students beliefs and backgrounds and look for
Speaker 1: emotional buttons. Students are encouraged to reveal negative habits or
Speaker 1: negative behaviors from their past, describe how like why they
Speaker 1: think they started doing that thing and then pledged to
Speaker 1: replace it, which both seems like it might be a
Speaker 1: reasonable thing. You know, you're getting to this thing, you're
Speaker 1: trying to purge yourself of your negative behaviors, but also
Speaker 1: kind of gives them leverage on you. That's scientology. That's scientology.
Speaker 1: It's exactly the same thing they do where you would
Speaker 1: go in and you'd have the E meter and you'd
Speaker 1: have to tell them things you feel guilty. Isn't that
Speaker 1: what they say is going on with John Travolta. I
Speaker 1: mean probably right, John Travolta is definitely killed a man.
Speaker 1: That's not a legal claim. Allegedly definitely killed a man.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he has allegedly, without a shadow of a doubt,
Speaker 1: killed a human being, allegedly allegedly, but without a shadow
Speaker 1: with no not a doubt in my mind. No, I
Speaker 1: mean they say there's secrets about like his sexuality and
Speaker 1: Tom Cruises, and that's how they keep them. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be so sad if we find out the truth
Speaker 1: and all it's been for this whole time is that
Speaker 1: he's gay. Yeah, dude, you didn't No one would have cared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just as much. Yeah, we're fine with it. No, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I wonder if it's more than that though, too.
Speaker 1: Who knows. Um, I mean, maybe he really likes it.
Speaker 1: It may just because I feel like with the celebrities
Speaker 1: in scientology, like Tom Cruise, they treat them well exactly.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's no bilking going right. There's like two tracks
Speaker 1: in scientology. There's the people that they like trapp in
Speaker 1: rooms I saw going clear, this is all very factual. No,
Speaker 1: But there's the people that they really milk for their
Speaker 1: money and then put into those brutal conditions. And every
Speaker 1: good cult needs also people who are genuinely having a
Speaker 1: good time to sell the colt. Yeah, or maybe a
Speaker 1: mixture of the two. Yeah, I think it. It takes.
Speaker 1: It takes both because even the people having a great
Speaker 1: time are being manipulated to some degree and maybe abused.
Speaker 1: The Bronfman's sisters are having a great time with us. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so basically, uh, you were supposed to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time and money sitting around in a group telling
Speaker 1: a coach all the bad things you did. Uh. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, a thirty five year old woman
Speaker 1: named Christian Snyder went missing after a Nextime session in Alaska.
Speaker 1: A note was found in her truck. It read, I
Speaker 1: was brainwashed in my emotional center of the brain was
Speaker 1: killed turned off. Please contact my parents if you find
Speaker 1: me or this note. I am sorry. I didn't know
Speaker 1: I was already dead. She's presumed dead. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: did they kill her? I mean I think she killed herself.
Speaker 1: I think she would. And we're going to get into
Speaker 1: some more of the abusive ship because this is just
Speaker 1: like the top of the barrel where they're having you
Speaker 1: talk about all the bad things that you've done. Um,
Speaker 1: there's seem to have been things that happened during some
Speaker 1: of these training sessions that really fucked with some people's heads. Um.
Speaker 1: So the Forbes article kicked off years of dogged coverage
Speaker 1: of Keith re Neeries World. The Observer published an article
Speaker 1: a few years later calling out billionaire Richard Branson as
Speaker 1: affiliated with Nexium. Well, branson spokesman was forced to deny
Speaker 1: it anything to do with the group. Nexium, using the
Speaker 1: Brontman sisters money, had hired an island that he owned
Speaker 1: to host an event. Branson. Yeah, well, I mean these
Speaker 1: girls are putting a shipload of money into into Keith.
Speaker 1: I mean millions, tens of millions, tens of millions. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll get into exactly how much in a little bit
Speaker 1: would I join a cult If they hired out an island,
Speaker 1: I would definitely go to their island. I would go.
Speaker 1: And then that's the creepiest place to be if it's
Speaker 1: a cult. It is on island with these fox but
Speaker 1: everything's free. It's Richard Branson's island, so it's probably a
Speaker 1: nice island. Yeah, he's so personal. He seems like he
Speaker 1: has good taste in islands. Oh yeah, he has a bathtub.
Speaker 1: At the end of the I realized I'm pulling this
Speaker 1: from like a VH. One Love Lives of Billionaires or
Speaker 1: whatever from like two thousand two. But he has a
Speaker 1: bathtub on an outdoor balcony overlooking the ocean. I thought
Speaker 1: at first you were just saying he has a bathtub,
Speaker 1: and I felt really bad for you. He has a bathtub.
Speaker 1: So many of us have shower bathtub combos, not just
Speaker 1: a hose outside. He's got a bathtub. He fills it
Speaker 1: up and he sits like a Richard. Yeah he stews
Speaker 1: in as well. Okay, um, so yeah. In two and ten,
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair published an article that expanded on allegations of
Speaker 1: mental abuse in ESP seminars, which helps to give a
Speaker 1: little bit more con x to Christian Snyder's disappearance quote.
Speaker 1: Today people will describe Nexican therapy sessions in which they
Speaker 1: were convinced that they are reincarnated Nazis or responsible for
Speaker 1: nine eleven. Looking back on her experience, Natalie says, Keith
Speaker 1: finds your vulnerabilities and then he prays on them. He
Speaker 1: broke them, Yeah, some of them at least. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: broke her. Yeah, I mean that's what it seems like happens.
Speaker 1: Who knows, maybe it was something else, but telling people
Speaker 1: their Nazis probably doesn't help. And we all have that
Speaker 1: I feel like and responsible for nine eleven. Yeah, like, man,
Speaker 1: there are things I feel guilty about that if you
Speaker 1: tugged on that thread, you might be able to get
Speaker 1: me to think I am responsible for bad things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been blaming nine eleven on you for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm getting a lot of negative tweets about it. People.
Speaker 1: People don't feel great about it. Shouldn't leven I take responsibility? Fine? Finally, yes,
Speaker 1: justice has been done. I'm sorry. Uh so I should
Speaker 1: probably point out here. Uh, this seems like an appropriate
Speaker 1: point to say that Gina, who remember from earlier the
Speaker 1: young lady Keith started seeing when she was sixteen, she
Speaker 1: ran off to a Buddhist monastery and committed suicide at
Speaker 1: age three. Uh so that's two deaths we can link,
Speaker 1: at least tentatively to Keith rn Eery. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: nothing that would legally implicate him, but two people he
Speaker 1: had a big influence on who wound up you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sucks that there's not more you can do when
Speaker 1: it's such a clear link. Yeah, and this is a
Speaker 1: girl he claimed was like a Buddhist princess. Your goddess.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's real. This is so bad because that
Speaker 1: must have been such a loaded statement for him to
Speaker 1: say she's a Buddhist goddess and then she goes after
Speaker 1: she's been totally broken down, to a Buddhist monastery. He
Speaker 1: was doing something very dark to her. He was, yeah,
Speaker 1: in somehow combination with whatever version of Buddhism he was
Speaker 1: selling her. I have read so much about Keith Ranieri
Speaker 1: at this point, and I suspect at most I've got
Speaker 1: about thirty of the fund up stuff he did, like
Speaker 1: because most of its no one's ever found out about.
Speaker 1: It's in these poor dead girls as heads a couple
Speaker 1: of other people who aren't willing to say anything about it. Um,
Speaker 1: that's such a sad ending to that. Yeah. So that
Speaker 1: two Vanity Fair article, The Heiresses and the Cult, gave
Speaker 1: the first full accounting of just how heavily Keith Renary
Speaker 1: had milked the Bronchman family. The So, if you bought
Speaker 1: Seagram's vodka, you were supporting that you were sporting. I did,
Speaker 1: Oh god, I bought a case of Seagram's vodka. Once
Speaker 1: I didn't buy it, I stole it. Okay, Well, no,
Speaker 1: then you hurt Keith Ranieri. I heard him. You were
Speaker 1: on the right side of his was it was already purchased.
Speaker 1: It was at like a music festival the morning after.
Speaker 1: It was a very backwards music festival. And there are
Speaker 1: all these cases of sea grams and we just took one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we drank sea grams for a while. That makes
Speaker 1: you the hero of this story. Yeah, yeah, I'm reconciling.
Speaker 1: Never feel bad about stealing vodka from a music festival.
Speaker 1: That's one of my very few rules. They were rich
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, always steal liquor from music festivals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can take it. They charge you. And Norman Alec
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, it's fair. Um. Anyway, here's a quote
Speaker 1: from the vanity fair article. According to legal filings and
Speaker 1: public documents, in the last six years, as much as
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty million was taken out of the
Speaker 1: Bronfman's trusts and bank accounts, including sixty six million allegedly
Speaker 1: used to cover keithrew Neeries failed bets in the commodities market,
Speaker 1: thirty million to buy real estate in Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: around Albany, eleven million for twenty two seat two engine
Speaker 1: Canada or c L six hundred jet and millions more
Speaker 1: to support a barrage of lawsuits across the country against
Speaker 1: Nexium's enemies. We're going to get into after some ads,
Speaker 1: the story of how Keith ran He used segrams of
Speaker 1: vodka money to back his second attempt to raise a
Speaker 1: perfect child. But first, here are the good people who
Speaker 1: support our show with products, indoor services, and we're back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about how Keith Ranieri stole like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars from the heirrors to the seagrams
Speaker 1: of vodka fortune uh, and he used a chunk of
Speaker 1: that money to back his second attempt at raising a
Speaker 1: perfect child who would change the course of human history. Man,
Speaker 1: I got so many questions, that's so much money. I
Speaker 1: under that if you have that much money, you're renting
Speaker 1: an island. Yeah, you rent yourself some islands for sure.
Speaker 1: But what was their facility? Like it was in l
Speaker 1: a right, They had a number of facilities, I think,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of this real estate was
Speaker 1: like essentially just bets because that was like the thing
Speaker 1: that Keith rear He lost sixty six million dollars betting
Speaker 1: on the commodities market. Oh yeah, I think he important
Speaker 1: to him that everyone knows he's super smart and so like,
Speaker 1: he was trying to prove that he could make a
Speaker 1: shipload of money if he just got a nest egg
Speaker 1: from these rich girls, could turn it into more. He
Speaker 1: could be mismanaging it because he's not very smart at
Speaker 1: this stuff. He's only smart at manipulating rich girls, which
Speaker 1: he's a genius at. He is a genius at it
Speaker 1: because a hundred and fifty million dollars that is a
Speaker 1: successful con. That's that's an a list con. And they
Speaker 1: had a plane, they bought a plane. He was living
Speaker 1: a rich life. He super was How could he say
Speaker 1: he didn't own a bed because he probably did. There
Speaker 1: was probably nothing in his name. That's part of how
Speaker 1: you keep the heat off of it. It's all the company.
Speaker 1: It's all the company. Keith Rewniery is a poor church
Speaker 1: mouse type man who is just dedicated to thinking about learning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a saint. We're going to talk about this second
Speaker 1: child he tried to steal from no uh So. Joehara,
Speaker 1: former Nexium consultant, wrote to the New York Attorney General
Speaker 1: to allege that Bronfman money had paid for the care
Speaker 1: of a boy named Galen, who was a mysterious three
Speaker 1: year old being raised to Keith's specifications. Now no one
Speaker 1: seemed to know Galen's real name. The story among Nexium
Speaker 1: was that his mother had died and his father had
Speaker 1: given the infant to the care of one of Rani's
Speaker 1: long term followers, Keith Nari, apparently decided to make the
Speaker 1: boy his heir, and in accordance to his theories on
Speaker 1: child development, the boy was fed a raw diet, isolated
Speaker 1: from other children, and cared for by a team of
Speaker 1: five Nanni's who each spoke to him in a different language.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh, no, no, no, no, this is is
Speaker 1: his kid. Okay, he's not with Keith anymore. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he's okay. I mean yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: was three, so you gotta hope he can. So Frank Parlato,
Speaker 1: if you remember Frank from the Frank Report, I remember Frank,
Speaker 1: good old Frank good Old Frank so wrote an article
Speaker 1: for the Niagara Falls Reporter where he claimed to know
Speaker 1: that Galen was actually just the child of Keith Reniery
Speaker 1: and a woman named Christine Keith, who was the long
Speaker 1: term follower who was caring for the kid. According to Frank,
Speaker 1: the adoption story was necessary because number one, it added
Speaker 1: like a layer of mystique that this child's real parents
Speaker 1: died Keith took him under his wing, but also because
Speaker 1: Keith's followers believed him to be celibate. Um oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so do you believe that it was his real son?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have no way to figure that out.
Speaker 1: That's a very um journalistic response. Yeah, Now, I am
Speaker 1: not a journalist. I'm going to go ahead and make
Speaker 1: some wild speculative claims. Roll with it. I think he
Speaker 1: was having all kinds of sex. I think he definitely
Speaker 1: gave birth to this sun. But I also bet there
Speaker 1: was a lot of like group sex going on and
Speaker 1: mixing of partners, because that happens in cults. So like
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't even his son. Is probably unclear. But
Speaker 1: see I don't think that. And we'll get into a
Speaker 1: little but I definitely there was a lot of groups
Speaker 1: that's going on. I don't think Keith was letting any
Speaker 1: other men be involved in the group sex. This isn't
Speaker 1: like one of those cults where everybody's got free love.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, is yes, this is that kind
Speaker 1: of call. Uh, So here's a quote from Frank Parletta,
Speaker 1: who again was a member of Nexium for like a
Speaker 1: year or two. Um quote. Some of his inner circle
Speaker 1: knew he wasn't celibate because they'd had sexual relations with him.
Speaker 1: They knew he wasn't celibate, and they believed he would
Speaker 1: when the time was ripe, have a special child with
Speaker 1: a chosen woman who he had preordained would be the
Speaker 1: mother of a child who would carry on Raine's work
Speaker 1: to save the world. Uh. Frank alleges that, you know,
Speaker 1: Keith getting uh this woman pregnant was an accident, and
Speaker 1: she wasn't someone he viewed as special enough to be
Speaker 1: his Mary Magdalen or no, not Magdalen. What's the Mary
Speaker 1: that had Jesus virgin Mary, that's the Mary. Uh. Frank
Speaker 1: of the Frank Report says that he didn't want to
Speaker 1: get this one pregnant, and so he just told her
Speaker 1: to lie and say the real mother was someone else
Speaker 1: who died. Uh. Quote from Frank Rainey immediately required Keith
Speaker 1: to lie about her maternity. He helped her hide her pregnancy,
Speaker 1: and being thin, she hardly showed for months. When her
Speaker 1: pregnancy became visible, he told people she was severely ill
Speaker 1: and could not be seen. Um again, Frank Parlato is
Speaker 1: a guy with a real grudge against Keith Nari and Nexium.
Speaker 1: I also believe a dent of that. I believe of that.
Speaker 1: It jells with everything else we know about. The more
Speaker 1: we hear about Frank, the more we hear from the
Speaker 1: Frank Report, the more I like this guy. You're a
Speaker 1: fan of the Frank Report. Yeah, he also stole a
Speaker 1: million dollars maybe from the Bronchman sisters. They sued him
Speaker 1: over it. It's hard to say what happened. I really
Speaker 1: I didn't. There's so much to dig in here. I
Speaker 1: didn't get into that that much. No, and I don't.
Speaker 1: It seems like they were just giving away money. Girls
Speaker 1: are given it away. They've got tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: I'm just saying numbers and got enough. He may have
Speaker 1: been innocent of this. I really have no idea what happened.
Speaker 1: I didn't look into the case. I'm still pro Frank.
Speaker 1: If you're out there, UH, tweet at me, let me
Speaker 1: know your side of the million dollar story. You can
Speaker 1: read his side on the Frank Report. There are literally
Speaker 1: hundreds of articles on that plain text website. No, No,
Speaker 1: this isn't the planet that was the weird i Q website.
Speaker 1: I had to do a lot of strange digging for this.
Speaker 1: Frank's website looks like a website that an individual person
Speaker 1: would make to settle a grudge. But it is just
Speaker 1: articles about Nexium and Keith Ranieri in the bronxans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like he copied a real looking website. It's something else.
Speaker 1: Put the name Frank in the Yeah, it's something else. Um,
Speaker 1: But I don't think he's lying about this. This seems
Speaker 1: completely in line with everything else about Keith Raniary, including
Speaker 1: the fact this woman he got pregnant was normally dangerously thin.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which will get Yeah that he really likes that.
Speaker 1: So eventually Keith left the cult and took her son
Speaker 1: with her, So we will never know how well Keith
Speaker 1: Ranieri is remarkable child reading strategies actually worked. I hope
Speaker 1: nothing but the best for that poor kid. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that kid has scars. I hope his mom got the
Speaker 1: matter early enough that maybe he doesn't have Especially the
Speaker 1: mom left so she probably kind of woke up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say woke up because I'm like
Speaker 1: my victim blaming, but I'm not. She got out and
Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't want to be blaming her any
Speaker 1: other women in this story, except maybe Allison mac oh.
Speaker 1: I want to blame her hard. Yeah. First I want
Speaker 1: to know everything she did. Yeah, this woman just seems
Speaker 1: like she got caught in for a while and then
Speaker 1: she woke up and got her kid the hell out
Speaker 1: of there, which is the responsible thing to do. That
Speaker 1: is so good on you, miss Keith or Kefie. It's
Speaker 1: k E F F E, which is I've never seen
Speaker 1: that last name before, so I'm just gonna say Keith
Speaker 1: um now. In spite of the mixed press coverage Nexium received,
Speaker 1: it was a big financial success, and Keith made millions,
Speaker 1: mostly from grifting his wealthiest adherents. He wasn't the kind
Speaker 1: of man to sit on his laurels, though. Over the years,
Speaker 1: a number of different spinoff groups joined Nexium's executive success programs.
Speaker 1: The nearest and dearest to Keith's heart and his other
Speaker 1: parts was the Woman's group Janesse j N E S
Speaker 1: S usually all caps. So what is Jeness exactly? I
Speaker 1: can see that question on your face on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a birth control pill. It does sound
Speaker 1: like a birth control pill like tines stops the babies
Speaker 1: real fast. That's how all birth control commercials do sound.
Speaker 1: Tell us about Janette. Yeah, let's talk about Janess. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll let Janesse themselves explain what they are.
Speaker 1: Are you ready for this? Our Jenness is our highly
Speaker 1: personal version of being a woman. It is an affirmation
Speaker 1: of our independent life journey with its lessons, tragedies, and magnificence.
Speaker 1: No two women are the same. Each of us has
Speaker 1: a unique, powerful, self secret formed from our experiences in life.
Speaker 1: No one said of words can quite quantify us, and
Speaker 1: no collection of rules can categorize us. Janesse in general
Speaker 1: is the personal work of empowered women in this world.
Speaker 1: You got a clear idea of what is Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: really because that seems like nonsense. It's nonsense, but I
Speaker 1: can sort of like imagine them writing that up, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like they're all sort of gathering around,
Speaker 1: they've they've ordered food, probably Italian food from like a corrabas, uh,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh yeah, but oh yeah, we we
Speaker 1: uplift each other. I I feel guilty making fun of
Speaker 1: this women's group. I don't think any woman wrote any
Speaker 1: word of that statement. I think this is all Keith Ray,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. We'll see, we'll get into this. Oh,
Speaker 1: I have so many questions. That's my theory. I really
Speaker 1: have no idea. Um, oh, it's his HiT's his trademark,
Speaker 1: vague style, and there's some other stuff that makes me
Speaker 1: think if he maybe he had some input from some
Speaker 1: ladies on this, but he definitely exercised a strong editorial hand.
Speaker 1: I think, Um, because Keith he's a control freak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I was going to say, well, who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe he had some right hand women, uh speaking like him,
Speaker 1: imitating his voice. But well, the Jenness website gives the
Speaker 1: whole story of how Janness was conceived of and founded.
Speaker 1: And I would be doing you on a and the
Speaker 1: whole internetitive service if I didn't read this story in
Speaker 1: its entirety. So take a moment to think about some
Speaker 1: of the most meaningful needs of society. From your perspective,
Speaker 1: is one of those needs world hunger, or possibly more pressing,
Speaker 1: is the issue of abuse of power and government, or
Speaker 1: maybe even more important, is a war in a foreign country.
Speaker 1: Or you might focus upon difficulties closer to home, such
Speaker 1: as the lack of community in your community, or possibly
Speaker 1: some type of social prejudice, or for some just the
Speaker 1: simple lack of carrying amongst friends and neighbors as most disturbing.
Speaker 1: There are many, many other equally important challenges in the world,
Speaker 1: but what is a primary concern is which issues are
Speaker 1: more important to you directly personally. On a spring day
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, in a car driving down the highway,
Speaker 1: this was the topic of discussion among three dearest friends, Pam, Marianna,
Speaker 1: and Keith Keith authored Keith offered an expertise and educational
Speaker 1: methodology along with a body of knowledge relating to the
Speaker 1: human dynamic. The most essential thing for Pam and Marianna
Speaker 1: was their struggles as women in a world where women's
Speaker 1: values are distorted. Over the next few days, the initial
Speaker 1: codification for a new method of gender transformation JANESS was
Speaker 1: born from the loving intent of three people who desire
Speaker 1: to create something meaningful together to make the world a
Speaker 1: better place. Wow Wow, Indeed the beginning sounds like a
Speaker 1: Miss America pageant answer, because it's like it's what it's
Speaker 1: if you asked someone who hasn't read the news ever
Speaker 1: in their life. What are problems in the world to
Speaker 1: be like, there's war in places, government, bad people not
Speaker 1: talking talking. Yeah, it's just so yeah, like there's actual
Speaker 1: war as you could drop like the actual problems in
Speaker 1: the world that you could be specific about to like
Speaker 1: make this seem a little bit less like a moon
Speaker 1: man wrote it. I think that Keith fancies himself a
Speaker 1: bit of a poet. Yeah, I think he thinks he
Speaker 1: has a writer early literary touch to his work. Why
Speaker 1: else would he paint such a vivid picture like on
Speaker 1: a spring day and driving down the highway. I really
Speaker 1: saw it. I saw the scene unfolding. I felt like
Speaker 1: I was there. I felt like I was one of
Speaker 1: these two generically named women um and being enchanted by
Speaker 1: his new methodology of generality. Well, what I love is
Speaker 1: that the creation of this woman's group. What the two
Speaker 1: women bring to the table is their struggles as women,
Speaker 1: And what Keith says he brings to the table is knowledge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's there's one thing he's good at, and it's man's blaming.
Speaker 1: He is the embodiment of it. He is. But what
Speaker 1: did what did this group do? We'll let me man
Speaker 1: explain that for you. It's not man splaining if I'm
Speaker 1: inviting it. I know, well do I do you? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I didn't even know myself until I said that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just felt really guilty after this
Speaker 1: paragraph that I'm about to read another six pages. Oh no, um, so,
Speaker 1: I bet you're probably still curious as to what exactly
Speaker 1: Janesse does. It feels very foreboding. Yeah, well, I think
Speaker 1: what Janess is is Keith believing he invented the concept
Speaker 1: of women having friends. Uh so, I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: to you again from the website Janet's Friendships. At the
Speaker 1: foundation of this movement, women start their journey with Janessee
Speaker 1: by attending an introductory weekend. The weekend is two and
Speaker 1: a half days packed full of powerful and engaging curriculum.
Speaker 1: At the close of the weekend, your weekend facilitator will
Speaker 1: guide women in the process of joining or creating a
Speaker 1: new friendship. So at the end of my seminar, you
Speaker 1: will make friends. You'll know how to have friends. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I get it. He spent his career up
Speaker 1: until this point pitting women against each other. To some degree,
Speaker 1: it sounds like, um like isolating them and brainwashing them
Speaker 1: and having sex with them when they were children. When
Speaker 1: they were children, So yeah, he's probably like, you know what,
Speaker 1: now it's time for me to allow them to be friends.
Speaker 1: And Janessee had a lot of powerful positive impacts and
Speaker 1: a lot of women, which I know because there are
Speaker 1: testimonials on the Jenness' website, like this one from Marissa Zaragoza.
Speaker 1: Since I was little, I remember my goal was to
Speaker 1: be like my father. He is an engineer. So when
Speaker 1: the time came to pick a profession, that path was
Speaker 1: natural to me. There I was graduating on electrical engineering
Speaker 1: on a last where only eight percent were women. I
Speaker 1: learned to work with men and among men, always competing
Speaker 1: to demonstrate my abilities and earn their approval. Years past,
Speaker 1: I decided to get married and create a family. I
Speaker 1: understood that those developed abilities were not enough for my
Speaker 1: new role as a mother. I decided to disguise my incapacity,
Speaker 1: covering it up with my professional success and depriving myself
Speaker 1: of enjoying the first years of my two children. When
Speaker 1: I met Janess, I started a journey to make amends
Speaker 1: with myself. With a sensible and motherly woman within me,
Speaker 1: I stopped trying to run away from myself and built
Speaker 1: the strength to face my fears, evaluate and surrender to
Speaker 1: my true passion, which is having kids and not a career.
Speaker 1: A woman didn't write that, no, Like I think Keith
Speaker 1: Rawnery wrote basically all of this. Yes, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That sounds like Keith Renari pretending to be a woman
Speaker 1: in Mexico. Uh this feels relevant to Handmaid's Tale. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he was trying to create a Handmaid's Tale right,
Speaker 1: because in his worldview, everyone has an amazing potential and
Speaker 1: should be fabulously wealthy. But also women's main calling is
Speaker 1: to have children. Well, his children were about to get
Speaker 1: into that right now. So in the actual sessions themselves,
Speaker 1: Near re posited some pretty radical theories on gender. He
Speaker 1: believes men are unable to enjoy the world with as
Speaker 1: much depth and complexity as women, but men know the
Speaker 1: difference between right and wrong. Women lead rich lives, but
Speaker 1: they're prone to tantrums and using bad behavior to get
Speaker 1: what they want. According to Keith, men are naturally polyamorous,
Speaker 1: while women are naturally monogamous. If you're keeping track, that's
Speaker 1: just polygamy. Wow, man, I was giving him so much credit.
Speaker 1: He's such a bad person, but I was truly giving
Speaker 1: him credit. I was like, at least he's still hanging
Speaker 1: onto this pseudo intellectualism. But he, uh, come on. That's
Speaker 1: why I don't think anyone else at the Orgies that
Speaker 1: was a man was getting involved. Oh, they definitely were
Speaker 1: there men, But there were men, and there was a
Speaker 1: men's group. I don't even talk about the men's up
Speaker 1: in this because there was just so much it to
Speaker 1: talk about. There was a men's group. He was bilking
Speaker 1: men out of money, but it doesn't seem like it
Speaker 1: was nearly as abusive to the men. Women. Well, I
Speaker 1: can't say I disagree with him. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that I myself am prone to emotional outbursts and tantrums,
Speaker 1: and all the men in my life are steady hands
Speaker 1: of guidance. If there's one thing the last couple of
Speaker 1: years have taught us, it's that men always know the
Speaker 1: difference between right and wrong. Yeah, yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: the last year. That's really the message of this podcast too,
Speaker 1: is that men know the difference between right and wrong,
Speaker 1: and women need help, and women need help and also
Speaker 1: be polygamists, but don't call it that, but only if
Speaker 1: you're a man everyone, but women aren't. Yeah, all right, Um,
Speaker 1: we have to break for some ads. When we get back, though,
Speaker 1: we're finally going to get Alison Mac small Bill start.
Speaker 1: I know, I know it took a while, right, it
Speaker 1: really did. Yeah, now we're ready to get into that.
Speaker 1: So all that and more after we talk about products
Speaker 1: which are available for purchase. We're back. The podcast is back.
Speaker 1: Everyone's okay. It's been an emotional roller coaster. It's caused
Speaker 1: me to question my own, um potential involvement in cults. Uh.
Speaker 1: But one thing I can say for certain, I am
Speaker 1: so excited to hear what Alison Mac did. Boy. So,
Speaker 1: Alison Mac small Fille actress, presumably actress on other things,
Speaker 1: but everyone just says, I'm tempted to say, no real
Speaker 1: other credits. I have no idea. She was definitely on
Speaker 1: small Bill. She was such a big character on small Ville.
Speaker 1: But then she never did anything else, And now I
Speaker 1: know why. Well, she started attending Nexium sessions in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven once her career hit a plateau. Keith apparently
Speaker 1: took an interest in her. She begged him to quote,
Speaker 1: make me a great actress again. Uh, okay, okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know if i'd say she was ever great. Look,
Speaker 1: the standout on small Ville was Amy Adams. I don't
Speaker 1: know who Amy Adams is either. Oh my gosh, really
Speaker 1: I'm super pop culture ignorant. She is a rival. Oh
Speaker 1: that's a great movie. Yeah, she was scientist Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's really good. Um, she's phenomenal. And she was on
Speaker 1: an episode of small Ville and played this like crazy
Speaker 1: monstrous person who like desperately wanted to lose weight. So
Speaker 1: she drank something or something that was an accident and
Speaker 1: then she started losing weight, but had an insatiable appetite
Speaker 1: that eventually causes her to eat people. Um. I do
Speaker 1: want to set the record straight. Okay. Alison mac has
Speaker 1: had other credits, unfortunately, quite a few good ones. She
Speaker 1: was on Wilfred Oh Ship, that's a great show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the following another good show. Other things. I don't know.
Speaker 1: She's been She's had a solid career. Yeah, like she was,
Speaker 1: she was on her way, for sure. She was on
Speaker 1: her way. So she joins Nexium, gets really involved with Nexium.
Speaker 1: She wound up helping to start a subcult within Geness
Speaker 1: called Dominus obsequious Sororium or doss, which I think means
Speaker 1: master over submissives and master in Latin. Dominus in Latin
Speaker 1: is like a masculine. The masculine version of that word
Speaker 1: would be the feminine. So yeah, it's like at this
Speaker 1: point they're not trying to fight the creepiness, their wholeheartedly
Speaker 1: embracing it. Some Yeah, yeah, let's cut straight to the point.
Speaker 1: Has anything good ever come from the Latin language? No?
Speaker 1: Moving on, so this little subcult deep Doss, is anything
Speaker 1: good ever come from Doss? No? The band Doss, okay, fair,
Speaker 1: one good thing, but not the computer thing. I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. So no, I don't even
Speaker 1: really know what I'm talking about. Uh So, this subcult
Speaker 1: eventually consisted of around a hundred and fifty women who
Speaker 1: were sort of the elite lady cult members of Nexium.
Speaker 1: The New York Times revealed how it all worked in
Speaker 1: an interview with Mac Quote, the woman who invited you
Speaker 1: to the group was your master, Max said, tucking in
Speaker 1: her blue socked feet under her, or the representation of
Speaker 1: your conscience. You're higher self. Your most ideal masters would
Speaker 1: help slaves count calories to save them from the trap
Speaker 1: of emotional eating. According to other women in the group. Again,
Speaker 1: Keith three neared, that's always a big focus on women
Speaker 1: being thin. Oh no, there's so much wrong with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: masters would dictate an act of self denial, like cold showers,
Speaker 1: a rousing yourself from bed at four am, and standing
Speaker 1: stock still for a time. Slaves were told to do
Speaker 1: acts of care for masters, perhaps bringing them coffee. Slaves
Speaker 1: might be told to abstain from orgasms, ostensibly to heal
Speaker 1: their negative sexual patterns. Max said that this was about
Speaker 1: devotion and like any spiritual practice or religion, I thought
Speaker 1: about free will. Did she believe in that? She said,
Speaker 1: you're dedicating your life one way or another. So Alice
Speaker 1: and Mac why did they have to Why did it
Speaker 1: have to go to orgasm denial? I don't know, Like
Speaker 1: they already have the creepy Latin name. Now they're like,
Speaker 1: let's just call it slaves and masters, and wow, this
Speaker 1: is so bad. Yeah, it's it's gotten really bad, real fast.
Speaker 1: I mean it's been bad the whole time. And just
Speaker 1: what r Kelly sex call was like, are you guys
Speaker 1: going to do them? I mean I should at some point.
Speaker 1: I have not done any research into that. I've read
Speaker 1: like one article about Yeah, I mean if this is
Speaker 1: what a sex call is, like, this is definitely a
Speaker 1: sex call at this point. Um, also abstained from orgasm.
Speaker 1: I feel like that is such a small piece of
Speaker 1: whatever was going on in that situation. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: the only creepy orgasm based rule. If there's one creepy
Speaker 1: orgasm based rule in a cult, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: feel like that's a cut rule. Yeah. Yeah, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a sub category, there's it sprawls out. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: like a fucking list. Yeah yeah. Um. Extreme weight loss
Speaker 1: was encouraged within Dows, especially for the women Raney fancied.
Speaker 1: Here's the ap quote. Investigators said Rainey preferred exceptionally thin women,
Speaker 1: so slaves had to stick to very low calorie diets
Speaker 1: and document every food they ate. As punishment for not
Speaker 1: following orders, women were forced to attend classes where they
Speaker 1: were forced to wear fake cow utters over their breast
Speaker 1: while people called them derogatory names or threatened with being
Speaker 1: put in cages. Oh my god. This is around the
Speaker 1: same time. He's also hooking women's heads up to brain
Speaker 1: scanners and showing them video of women being cut apart.
Speaker 1: Stuff like that. Yeah, it's real messed up. Now, Raineery
Speaker 1: only acknowledged having sexual relationships with two members of e
Speaker 1: O S or DOSS or whatever. Um. This is like
Speaker 1: he acknowledged in the New York Times, like he did
Speaker 1: this miacole where like, yeah, I've been bad, but you
Speaker 1: know it was it was like it was not like
Speaker 1: really bad. It was just like like I couldn't control
Speaker 1: myself and they cared about me so much, right, I Oh,
Speaker 1: he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Is he a sociopath?
Speaker 1: He might be. Usually I'm I really hesitant to call
Speaker 1: people associate. I don't know, because it's a right, it's
Speaker 1: a but it's a real thing. And he certainly that
Speaker 1: would be a thing to check on if you were
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist working on Keith Rawnary. He's certainly there's some
Speaker 1: morning signs here, yea or maybe just a narcissist definitely
Speaker 1: to accept no responsibility like that. But the cow waters, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cow wathers like that. So the women were in
Speaker 1: a state of starvation, yeah, so already a deeply altered
Speaker 1: state and then being fed those images. Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: lost their minds. Yeah. In interviews with other members of
Speaker 1: the of DOST, the New York Times reported that quote
Speaker 1: promising to seduce Ranieri, which was apparently the way he
Speaker 1: preferred to be approached sexually rather than putting himself on
Speaker 1: the line, was also one of the ways some women
Speaker 1: later said they were told to show commitment to the sisterhood.
Speaker 1: So at some point, the women of d Os started
Speaker 1: branding each other with hot metal pokers, possibly in the
Speaker 1: shape of Keithrewni's initials. The branding sessions would last thirty
Speaker 1: to forty five minutes and where apparently as painful as
Speaker 1: you would imagine a forty five minute branding session would be.
Speaker 1: What do you do for forty five minutes? You're in
Speaker 1: horrible pain? Like my understanding of branding as it relates
Speaker 1: to livestock is it's like I've never branded cattle, neither
Speaker 1: of I. But I don't know if it's fast and
Speaker 1: thought about it. You think a lot about that. I
Speaker 1: think a lot about it. No, I mean, I've I'm
Speaker 1: a vegetarian. I've thought about things we do to animals,
Speaker 1: and branding always seemed weird. It doesn't seem like a
Speaker 1: nice thing. I think they usually do a chip now anyway,
Speaker 1: that sounds much worse. Really, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: the cows prefer the chip. Yeah, they prefer not being
Speaker 1: eaten probably, who knows. Yeah, I don't though I don't
Speaker 1: eat them, but who knows? Yeah? Um so, the forty
Speaker 1: five minutes of having a fucking hot metal poker shoved
Speaker 1: into your skin until it burns you horribly. There's pictures
Speaker 1: in the New York Times article of one of these
Speaker 1: women's brands. It definitely looks like it's Keith Nari's initials.
Speaker 1: What else would it be? What are they claiming? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I haven't heard a direct claim for what
Speaker 1: the branding symbolically. At that point, it's like, why are
Speaker 1: you even denying it? Yeah? I mean Alison Mac says
Speaker 1: that she came up with it because basically she thought
Speaker 1: a tattoo wasn't enough of a commitment. Which, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the image, hold on, and it's a big
Speaker 1: brand like you again, the pictures are online, you look
Speaker 1: at them. These are not like a tiny it's not
Speaker 1: getting a little bitty tattoo or whatever, like this is
Speaker 1: a substantial thing to have, deeply painful, yeah, agonizing. Um so,
Speaker 1: Alison Mac again says that she came up with the
Speaker 1: idea herself. Here's another quote from the New York Times article.
Speaker 1: It was a scary experience, like any real rite of passage.
Speaker 1: But some of them kidded around through it, even if
Speaker 1: they cried when they were getting the brand, even if
Speaker 1: they wore surgical masks to help them with breathing in
Speaker 1: the smell of burning flesh, even if the brand was
Speaker 1: much larger than they were told it would be and
Speaker 1: looked like an ancient hieroglyph, Even if they were in
Speaker 1: a state of sheer terror, they were still able to
Speaker 1: transcend the fear and cry out to one another, badass
Speaker 1: warrior bitches, let's get strong together. Who Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: they're using pop feminists are jargon to validate the most
Speaker 1: degrading to humanizing practice. We're badasses because we're going to
Speaker 1: get this man's initials branded onto our crotches. To seventeen,
Speaker 1: I think, is when this has happened. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: two seventeen UM. So now that paragraph right there makes
Speaker 1: me think back to a quote in those Nextican Packets
Speaker 1: from two thousand three, where Keith Renary wrote that complaining
Speaker 1: about pain or expressing hunger were both examples of parasitic behavior.
Speaker 1: His specific example of the parasitic statement was the sentence
Speaker 1: I know I promised, but I had no idea how
Speaker 1: hard or painful this was going to be. So what's
Speaker 1: interesting is Alison mack was seemingly like a crazy person
Speaker 1: who by serendipity, came into contact with this already insane
Speaker 1: group and then was able to like enact her craziness
Speaker 1: through it. But is there more to the story. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no definitive answer on that. It is possible that
Speaker 1: Alison mac just was a looney person who had her
Speaker 1: leoninus opened up by this. I don't think she came
Speaker 1: up with a branding idea. I think she's dedicated to
Speaker 1: Keith R. Neary and he told her to say that
Speaker 1: it was her idea. I feel like it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing Keith Earie would do. She's drinking, she has
Speaker 1: hugged the kool aid. She's but jugging the kool aid
Speaker 1: at the point like she's she's saying yea um. But
Speaker 1: I don't think she came up with this idea. When
Speaker 1: you look at the pictures and stuff of her most
Speaker 1: recently being led into court, like her lawyers are holding
Speaker 1: her up she can barely walk. She's so scared. She's
Speaker 1: culpable to an extent because she helped do some bad
Speaker 1: things here. But I also think she's more of a
Speaker 1: victim of Keith Rinieri than anything else. That's that's my thinking.
Speaker 1: I may be being too charitable here, But that's interesting
Speaker 1: because all this time I had been sort of thinking,
Speaker 1: it really goes to show you that women can be horrible.
Speaker 1: She definitely did, because I think she was active in
Speaker 1: this um. But yeah, I can see how she was
Speaker 1: brainwashed by especially I mean, actresses are already so primed
Speaker 1: to be um obsessed about their weight in a way
Speaker 1: that's already I think, making them kind of insane. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll went in to something. I mean, especially living
Speaker 1: in l A. I like, I get some of that.
Speaker 1: I'm a fucking dude. Yeah, it's crazy the images we
Speaker 1: receive coupled with the messages. Um, I can see her
Speaker 1: being a victim to him. She's definitely both a victim
Speaker 1: and a perpetrator. Yeah, but what's going to happen to her,
Speaker 1: We don't know. We are now into the stuff that
Speaker 1: Keith Nari is most famous for, the stuff that the
Speaker 1: most recent new York Times articles talked about Keith and
Speaker 1: Alison Mack had both been charged with sex trafficking. Oh right,
Speaker 1: this is the headline that made its way to This
Speaker 1: is the headline that made its way to you. But
Speaker 1: before everything fell apart, before the New York Times articles,
Speaker 1: Keith Reniery used Allison's legit actresshood to help him produce
Speaker 1: ads for his seminars. Here's one she put together for
Speaker 1: ESP in two thousand fourteen. When I first came to ESP,
Speaker 1: I had, on the surface is something that seemed to
Speaker 1: be like the perfect life for a pretty good life,
Speaker 1: like superficially materialistically, I was very successful. I had the job,
Speaker 1: I had the dog, I had the car, I had
Speaker 1: the boyfriend, I had the blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah, the clothes, everything that I thought
Speaker 1: I needed in order to be okay. And yet I
Speaker 1: couldn't stand to be with my family for more than
Speaker 1: two hours at a time. And the idea of being
Speaker 1: honest with even my best friend was something that was
Speaker 1: so far outside the realm of possibility that I just
Speaker 1: kind of thought, you always lived your life in authentically, um,
Speaker 1: And when I came to ESP and I started to
Speaker 1: do the work in the goals lab, do the work
Speaker 1: in the classes. I started to transform in a way
Speaker 1: that I never expected. Like I literally didn't know that
Speaker 1: you could spend time with someone and not be nervous.
Speaker 1: I literally didn't know that it was possible to have
Speaker 1: a week with your family where you didn't feel like leaving.
Speaker 1: I just thought that that wasn't really possible. I thought
Speaker 1: it happened in the movies. And now that's my life,
Speaker 1: that's my reality. I have an experience of my only
Speaker 1: that is nothing but joy, and it's it's astounding. So
Speaker 1: that's her ad for executive success programs. And I tell you,
Speaker 1: when you read it on paper, it sounds so crazy,
Speaker 1: especially if I read it to you. Yeah, and so evil.
Speaker 1: But she too, like seasoned actress that she is. She's good.
Speaker 1: You feel it, I mean, and she's making it feel relatable. Um.
Speaker 1: But to know that that is the woman who was
Speaker 1: leading branding fashion, even if it wasn't her idea. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, people are wearing masks because the stinch of
Speaker 1: burning human flesh is so thick in the air. She
Speaker 1: willingly gave those details. I don't think she gave the details.
Speaker 1: I think it was other women who had been branded
Speaker 1: who talked about how awful it was. But she willingly
Speaker 1: admitted to The New York Times that that was my
Speaker 1: idea because I thought it was more badass than a tattoo. Man,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, it's wild. But the biggest mind buck of
Speaker 1: all of this is going this deep into it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm like starting to empathize a little bit
Speaker 1: with her, and I don't like how comfortably close I
Speaker 1: am to understanding how these people did these things. But
Speaker 1: that's it makes me feel close. I think it's important
Speaker 1: to get there though, Like that's my whole motivation with
Speaker 1: this show, with any of these episodes, is to try
Speaker 1: to get you a little closer to like something fucked
Speaker 1: up that somebody just you can understand how these things happen,
Speaker 1: because then maybe you're a little omis mean, But then
Speaker 1: you read the headline and it's like that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. This is only crazy. People will get
Speaker 1: involved and it's like, well, no, Alison mac it's hard
Speaker 1: to get a regular role on a big TV show
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. That's an achievement. She had a career. She
Speaker 1: is a smart person who set her mind you a
Speaker 1: goal and accomplished things and also bought into this weird
Speaker 1: cult and maybe had them start branding women like and
Speaker 1: it made sense to her at the time. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I especially seeing her talk just now, how she was saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: I can connect with my family now, I don't have
Speaker 1: that social anxiety. There's like a part of me that's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can see how, in a really fucked up way,
Speaker 1: if you impose great suffering on people with this guy's
Speaker 1: of like pop feminism, there's some level on which they
Speaker 1: feel bonded and are so broken that they don't maybe
Speaker 1: feel certain anxieties anymore. But I don't know, I kind
Speaker 1: of get it. Yeah. She also put together a number
Speaker 1: of other video interviews for Jeness And this is an
Speaker 1: awkward segue, but I had to make it somehow. They
Speaker 1: all consist of Keith Ranieri and Alison Max sitting at
Speaker 1: a table and talking to each other. I think these
Speaker 1: videos are fascinating, both for the looks on Alison's face,
Speaker 1: which sadly won't transmit over the podcast, so you can
Speaker 1: look at the video online. Will post it on behind
Speaker 1: the Baschard's dot com. But they're most interesting for the
Speaker 1: insights they give as to how Keith Ranieri works, as
Speaker 1: to how he's sort of you can kind of see
Speaker 1: how he ensnares people on a one on one level.
Speaker 1: Here's him talking about gender in a twenty six minute
Speaker 1: long video called Beyond Age Your Gender Human First. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna play all twenty six minute. I was thinking,
Speaker 1: there's a push right now, just culturally, similar to like
Speaker 1: the creativity push. It feels like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are talking about reading books about and doing things studies
Speaker 1: on this idea of like the need for more female
Speaker 1: strength in the world. You know, we have like the
Speaker 1: elections happening with Hillary Clinton is being a candidate and
Speaker 1: all this, and everybody's like women need to take more
Speaker 1: leadership roles and things like that. And I was just wondering,
Speaker 1: like what your take was on that, given that your
Speaker 1: perspective more humanists. I'm going to give you a short thing.
Speaker 1: You're using a lot of male language and male male
Speaker 1: things to describe this, and that's disrespectful to women. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, should women be in leadership roles? I think
Speaker 1: women are in certain types of lead ship roles. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: it is controlled a lot by men. Can women rise
Speaker 1: to be fuller in the world and in the principles
Speaker 1: that they experience and bringing that wisdom they're unique upbringing,
Speaker 1: and even the cultural poison that they have to transform
Speaker 1: the world. Absolutely, they have to become aware of it,
Speaker 1: and they have to have that desire and they have
Speaker 1: to struggle. It's going to be a big struggle, and
Speaker 1: it's a type of struggle because they have to struggle
Speaker 1: about against the type of oppression, a type of box
Speaker 1: that they've been placed in by men, if you will,
Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's not just men now, it's
Speaker 1: men that were formed by literature that were formed by men,
Speaker 1: that was formed by literature that was formed by men,
Speaker 1: was formed by the jungle and sort of that, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, men need to change in a different way.
Speaker 1: But both sexes have to become more self aware and
Speaker 1: understand outside of gender, outside of sex, there's human and
Speaker 1: there are things that are transcendent as human. I'll say this,
Speaker 1: if you saw that clip or listened to it um
Speaker 1: without any context, even if you weren't half listening, if
Speaker 1: you were listening, and I see you, but I mean me,
Speaker 1: I might go along with it. I mean, he is
Speaker 1: using the language of contemporary gender thought in a very
Speaker 1: vague and sort of wishy washy way, I suppose um,
Speaker 1: and that alone is kind of chilling. It's like, I
Speaker 1: think it makes me think about so many of the
Speaker 1: conversations I've had that sounded like that. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: only thing type place where it slips in there for
Speaker 1: me where he's not making a good impression of like
Speaker 1: a super woke intellectual dude is when he chastises her
Speaker 1: for being disrespectful to women. Yeah, that was That's like
Speaker 1: the part where it's like, wait, what the funk? But
Speaker 1: then he immediately moves on to talking about how we
Speaker 1: all have toxicity in us because of the literature were
Speaker 1: raised on and stuff, And it's like, but I've I've
Speaker 1: heard men talk like that, like and and not always
Speaker 1: in a way that isn't raging. It is true that
Speaker 1: we have gendered language. And cutting to her smiling very pleasantly,
Speaker 1: like deeply taking it in sort of though it like
Speaker 1: it did bump me. There was a part of me
Speaker 1: that was like cool, but she gets it. She doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like she's being man's plain. It was chilling. It
Speaker 1: is chilling. There are so many of these videos out there.
Speaker 1: I've watched an uncomfortable amount of them to make this podcast.
Speaker 1: There's a part of me that almost wants to just
Speaker 1: run that one to completion, but obviously that would be
Speaker 1: really boring on a podcast. They are cheesy and uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and also oddly compelling and hard to watch past a
Speaker 1: certain point. Um, I'm only gonna play a clip from
Speaker 1: one more because I think it really emphasizes the culti
Speaker 1: nature of Keith's Crazy Empire. We've been talking a lot
Speaker 1: about what makes something a cult. One of the really
Speaker 1: critical things to make something a cult is developing your
Speaker 1: own language. Scientology does this a lot. You know, sp
Speaker 1: suppressive person. You know, you've got your OT levels and whatnot,
Speaker 1: but you know other you can talk about like weird
Speaker 1: um snake handling. Christian cults within parts of the United
Speaker 1: States do this to every Every cult does this where
Speaker 1: they try to create different terms for things than the
Speaker 1: majority of society uses. Because cults are all that isolation.
Speaker 1: They're all about separating you from everybody else. So if
Speaker 1: you can create a different sort of vocabulary for your cult,
Speaker 1: then you can isolate people very effectively without them even
Speaker 1: knowing that. That's what you're doing, which is something that
Speaker 1: social groups do. Yeah, absolutely, which makes the line feel
Speaker 1: so fine. It does because you do this with your friends,
Speaker 1: you have inside joke in terms that would be nonsense
Speaker 1: to anybody else but means something to you. All the
Speaker 1: stuff like, there's none of the cult making techniques at
Speaker 1: their most basic level are inherently toxic. They're successful in
Speaker 1: helping to make a cult because they're all things that
Speaker 1: people do normally. You know, there's a lot of used
Speaker 1: to talk about the similarities between U. C. B uh.
Speaker 1: If you talk to anyone honestly who was in a
Speaker 1: combat unit in the military, they will talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of CULTI kind of behavior and different terms that
Speaker 1: people come and like. Because whenever you're isolated with a
Speaker 1: group of people, whether it's a friend group or you're
Speaker 1: all studying to be an improv or you're in battle together,
Speaker 1: you develop certain bonds and you become isolated from the
Speaker 1: rest of society to a certain extent. And that's normal.
Speaker 1: That's what families are too. Cults utilize these as weapons
Speaker 1: in order to take people's free will away in a sense.
Speaker 1: And I think this clip what's interesting to me about it,
Speaker 1: it's it's called journeying through the stages of development. And
Speaker 1: it's nonsense. The conversation they're having is nonsense because the
Speaker 1: terms that they are using don't mean the same thing
Speaker 1: to them that they do to us. Oh so, like
Speaker 1: stages of development, I assume to them have some slightly
Speaker 1: more specific meaning, you know, no, because they're they're talking
Speaker 1: about little little little be the easiest way to get across.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to stay here. I've been thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about just the concept of um, like compulsion, like, uh,
Speaker 1: something is good, something is nice, something is pleasant, something
Speaker 1: is lots of self through the emotions. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: I just I'm curious about that because it seems like
Speaker 1: something that's a reverence issue. It is um. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, we're born as bodies and emotions and not
Speaker 1: much cognitive facility. You know, people don't realize that there's
Speaker 1: even something called mind of other there's a whole progression
Speaker 1: of our self awareness. You ask a young child, and
Speaker 1: so he t he starts talking about stages the belt.
Speaker 1: He dropped some actual educational psychology after that point. But
Speaker 1: that early thing where they're talking about it's a reverence
Speaker 1: issue and the loss of the body through like that's
Speaker 1: all nonsense. It's nonsense, but yeah, you can really feel
Speaker 1: that they have these constructed uh meanings behind them, like
Speaker 1: how she's searching for the word compulsion. Yeah, that's in
Speaker 1: their core curriculous exactly. And he responds with the definition
Speaker 1: from the curriculum and she said, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. So I don't know. I'm sure at this
Speaker 1: point some of you are pulling out your credit cards
Speaker 1: to go book an ESP training seminar because this is
Speaker 1: some compelling ship. And I mean, I get it. I
Speaker 1: listened to some self help stuff. I think Ted Radio
Speaker 1: our feels like a self help our. It's all pelling,
Speaker 1: and I think that the toxic parts of this happens
Speaker 1: number one when it's centered around one person. So, you know,
Speaker 1: UCB may have some culty aspects to it, but Amy
Speaker 1: Poehler isn't asking you to give her money directly and
Speaker 1: follow her guidelines on life and dress the way that
Speaker 1: she dresses and believe the things that she believes. You're right,
Speaker 1: that is and it it is a company that is
Speaker 1: taking all of this money, which I think unsettle some people.
Speaker 1: UCB sure does this, but what truly makes this ac
Speaker 1: cult and not just a hack self help group. Is
Speaker 1: all the dark stuff. That's the big part of it
Speaker 1: is is it maladaptive? Is it hurting people? Yeah? Um
Speaker 1: so uh spoiler alert. Executive Success Programs is no longer
Speaker 1: hosting seminars. They're not taking Yeah, they've got it. If
Speaker 1: you go to their website, I'm going to show you
Speaker 1: what their website looks like, because it's as pretentious as
Speaker 1: everything else Keith Renier he has ever made in his life.
Speaker 1: I love the first thing on the website is a
Speaker 1: picture of Albert Einstein, and up, we cannot solve our
Speaker 1: problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Hey,
Speaker 1: I that's him. He's trying to tell you that everything
Speaker 1: you know is wrong. We'll have a picture from the
Speaker 1: website up on our website, which is not a cult website. Although,
Speaker 1: if you want to pay me seven thousand dollars, I
Speaker 1: will talk to you for a week. Okay, absolutely, So
Speaker 1: that's an offer on the table. If I were the
Speaker 1: heir to the Seagroom's fortune, Brontman's sisters, look me up.
Speaker 1: I will not charge a hundred and fifty million, ten
Speaker 1: million dollars. You know what, I'll give you all the sashes. Man.
Speaker 1: I wonder what their life is right now. They're probably
Speaker 1: still super rich and fine. Yeah right, I'm sure they're Okay,
Speaker 1: they're fine. Yeah, they're not the people like hopefully they
Speaker 1: weren't physically or sexually abused. If they were, then I
Speaker 1: feel terrible about this, Um. But I think they're still rich, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think the justice of the world, they kind of
Speaker 1: just hopefully they're wiser now and will not fall for
Speaker 1: occult again. Uh So, The New York Times published their
Speaker 1: first article on Keith Reniery and next um in October.
Speaker 1: This led to a federal investigation. Uh. Mr Reynieri fled
Speaker 1: to Mexico, ditched his cell phone, and only communicated to
Speaker 1: his followers through encrypted messaging apps. He was arrested in
Speaker 1: late March in Port of Art, to Mexico because encrypted
Speaker 1: messaging apps aren't as encrypted or secure as people pretend
Speaker 1: they are, which Paul Manaford also learned recently. Yeah another
Speaker 1: great guy. Yeah, don't commit crimes and assume that your
Speaker 1: encrypted Messaging act will protect you. So this is so
Speaker 1: messed up, But a part of me was kind of
Speaker 1: hoping that he was still in Mexico and like this
Speaker 1: was still ongoing, and know that I could like get
Speaker 1: in there, you know, like oh and learn how to
Speaker 1: reverence issue, get into the vigilante just oh like oh,
Speaker 1: like throwing pipe bombs at him. You're still out there,
Speaker 1: let's go. Yeah, um, but he's the he's been caught.
Speaker 1: I'll find one of these guys who hasn't been caught
Speaker 1: and we can go Windo, blow up someone's car. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine. But he was caught, so he's he's in
Speaker 1: process right now, I assume, Yeah, so he Allison Mack
Speaker 1: was arrested a few weeks later. She was released on
Speaker 1: five million dollars bail. Last I checked, which was like
Speaker 1: Wednesday when I was finishing writing this. He is still
Speaker 1: in jail. US attorney Richard Donna Hue, when they were
Speaker 1: both arrested, stated as a legend the indictment, Alison Mack
Speaker 1: recruited women to join what was purported to be a
Speaker 1: female mentorship group that was in fact created and led
Speaker 1: by Keith Raneery. The victims were exploited both sexually and
Speaker 1: for their labor to the defendants benefit, which seems like
Speaker 1: an accurate statement, the most accurate statement anything so far
Speaker 1: of all the quotes I've read, this is the Rhney
Speaker 1: does not appear to have taken to prison. Well. On
Speaker 1: June six, the day I finished writing this, Keat's lawyers
Speaker 1: as the court to allow him to pay ten million
Speaker 1: dollars bond to be released. He even agreed to live
Speaker 1: under armed security until his court date in October. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, he hasn't been released, although maybe
Speaker 1: something happened the last day or so, but you should
Speaker 1: check up on that. I think he's still in jail,
Speaker 1: and hopefully they don't let him pay ten million dollars bond.
Speaker 1: I don't believe he left one exactly. He's definitely a
Speaker 1: flight risk. Ranieri's attorneys referred to the US Justice Department
Speaker 1: as the quote morality police. Uh. They accused them of
Speaker 1: wrongly implicating raneery and sex trafficking. They said their client,
Speaker 1: who is being held without bond since his the rest
Speaker 1: three months ago, as an accomplished ethicist who is not
Speaker 1: a danger and should be released from custody. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I don't trust anyone who calls themselves an accomplished ethicist,
Speaker 1: humanitarian judo champion. Okay, yeah you will, judo champion. I'll
Speaker 1: believe I'll just think very little of them. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that should be the end of what I have to
Speaker 1: say about Keith Raney. But there's so much more. And
Speaker 1: again I didn't even talk about the men's groups. There's
Speaker 1: other there's so much ship going on here. But there
Speaker 1: is one more thing I have to talk about. You
Speaker 1: remember earlier in the episode how I talked about Elon
Speaker 1: Musk being taken in by that weird website called the Knife. Well,
Speaker 1: let's start talking about There's no more about Elon Musk here.
Speaker 1: This podcast isn't about attacking Elon. I can't protect him anymore. No,
Speaker 1: he's not one of the bad people in this thing.
Speaker 1: So fake news became a buzzword in two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's been a thing for as long as there's
Speaker 1: been news, what with the Spanish American War. Uh, but
Speaker 1: you know, it became a buzzword after the election. And
Speaker 1: in two thousands seventeen, Nextium launched a pretentiously named website
Speaker 1: called The Knife of Aristotle. Come on the n the
Speaker 1: Knife of fucking Aristotle. Their initial ad campaign just said,
Speaker 1: subscribe to the Knife of Aristotle and see what it is,
Speaker 1: which fuck you? Um on seventeen. Recently, unemployed journalist Brock
Speaker 1: Wilbert published an article paste magazine called The Knife of
Speaker 1: Aristotle isn't just a fake fake news site, It's a cult.
Speaker 1: Brock and his wife found a job opportunity at a
Speaker 1: legitimate journalism job opportunity site, and it took them to
Speaker 1: a website called Ethical Media dot Org. Journalists were being
Speaker 1: recruited on a to a team that would evaluate news
Speaker 1: articles based on an objective system of measurement, which was,
Speaker 1: of course proprietary. UH. Brock sent them an inquiry and
Speaker 1: they responded right away, offering him three to five thousand
Speaker 1: per month to let him work remotely. But there was
Speaker 1: a catch quote. We use a proprietary methodology to carry
Speaker 1: out our writing an analysis process. Our writers are required
Speaker 1: to have a working knowledge of our rating system and standards.
Speaker 1: In order to learn this, they attend five weeks of
Speaker 1: advanced training and Communication Logic and Ethics. The first week
Speaker 1: of the training is focused on personal development and ethics.
Speaker 1: Are analysts get to deeply explore their belief systems and
Speaker 1: gain an understanding of the human mechanisms of perception that
Speaker 1: influenced our communication and culture. So UH five weeks of
Speaker 1: training was required to get this job in New York.
Speaker 1: It was not paid the training. Brock kept looking into
Speaker 1: the group and found out that they seemed to have
Speaker 1: a weird right wing bias and evaluated news sites using
Speaker 1: an unclear rubric. They had a staff page and many
Speaker 1: of the people on it seemed questionably real. Of course,
Speaker 1: Brock Wilbur elected not to go. He wrote an article
Speaker 1: about it instead and delved into a bird's ivy of
Speaker 1: the Keith Renery story. He notes in a postcript that
Speaker 1: The Knife of Aristotle removed their staff page after his article. Um,
Speaker 1: the staff stuff on there sounds exactly like the jenness.
Speaker 1: It does. I was gonna say, like one of the
Speaker 1: journalists talks about how I went to school in Mexico
Speaker 1: and worked for Mexican magazine. You Mexican, Mexican magazines, that's
Speaker 1: how you talk about your professional career. I worked in
Speaker 1: American magazines. They had Keith had some something going on
Speaker 1: with Mexico. He really did. He really likes Mexico and
Speaker 1: seems to be good at getting the children of Mexican
Speaker 1: presidents to give him that. I guess he was rich
Speaker 1: by that point. I will say he is definitely the
Speaker 1: world's number one authority on getting children of Mexican presidents
Speaker 1: to pay him several thousand dollars as far as I'm
Speaker 1: aware of that, and that is a credential he can
Speaker 1: list on his web Absolutely, it's specific credential. It is.
Speaker 1: If I saw that, I'd be like, that's that's something
Speaker 1: I too would like to grift the children of Mexican politicians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not an essential Yeah politicians. Yeah, uh so um Brock.
Speaker 1: Wilbur's article went relatively viral and did some damage to
Speaker 1: the Knife of Aristotle's reputation. But if you think Keith
Speaker 1: Ranieri is the kind of man who would give up
Speaker 1: on a good scam opportunity just because a journalist caught him,
Speaker 1: you don't know Keith Ranieri. The Knife of Aristotle continued instead,
Speaker 1: billing itself as a scholarship opportunity rather than a job.
Speaker 1: Egyptian American author Yahia Labba Beatie was browsing a journalism
Speaker 1: job board one day when he came across a posting
Speaker 1: for an Ethical media scholarship. They claim to be a
Speaker 1: media watchdog working to revolutionize the way we read news.
Speaker 1: Winners would receive full admission to their training seminar and
Speaker 1: cash prizes of ten thousand, three thousand, or one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Yahia applied and arranged a skype interview with the journalist
Speaker 1: who work for this watchdog. The guy claimed that quote,
Speaker 1: we want the news to read more like science, less
Speaker 1: like fiction. A few days after that, Yahia received a
Speaker 1: letter awarding him a three thousand dollar scholarship as long
Speaker 1: as he met the work requirement with eighteen hours per
Speaker 1: week for a minimum of one year. Of course, this
Speaker 1: guy was a journalist too, and he did some digging
Speaker 1: and quickly discovered the Keith three Neery connection. Yeah heah
Speaker 1: didn't take the scholarship, but the Knife of Aristotle is
Speaker 1: still active today. They've rebranded, of course, and now call
Speaker 1: themselves just the Knife. They look pretty legitimate if you
Speaker 1: just skimmed them, like I can't blame Elon Musk for
Speaker 1: running across an article and not thinking too much. I
Speaker 1: can Okay, I probably could too. I'm judged out right now.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't believe the Knife, No, no, but I I've
Speaker 1: been working in journalism for years, so I would be like,
Speaker 1: this is a news side I've never heard of. How
Speaker 1: are they saying the New York Times is thirty seven
Speaker 1: percent reliable? What is their rubric? And you look into
Speaker 1: it and stuff. If you're having a fight with the
Speaker 1: New York Town Times, Yeah that's true. Yeah, maybe you don't,
Speaker 1: you'd let it go. He's not a hero for following
Speaker 1: a dumb news site, but like, you know, yeah, it's understandable.
Speaker 1: He's yet another person who fell for Keith Renieri's bullshit.
Speaker 1: So the knife should be shut down. The knife is
Speaker 1: still operating right now. Uh. You can find their rankings
Speaker 1: on articles using their supposedly scientific system today. I found
Speaker 1: no direct references to Keith Renieri on the site, but
Speaker 1: I did find one indirect reference. So there is a
Speaker 1: series that the site does, called with Prejudice, where they
Speaker 1: rehabilitate unfairly maligned thinkers like Google engineer James Namore or
Speaker 1: New York Times columns editor Barry Weiss. The series stars
Speaker 1: Jen's Eric Gould, who is their editor in chief. The
Speaker 1: best way I could describe Jen's Eric Gould is discount
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro, and Ben Shapiro himself as discount Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 1: So you're really getting um, Yeah, Jen's Eric Gould, who
Speaker 1: also appears to be the main force behind the website.
Speaker 1: The series with Prejudice, though was not originally called that.
Speaker 1: It used to be called Blacklisted, but someone complained, and
Speaker 1: there is a note on that section of the site
Speaker 1: that says this series was previously titled Blacklisted. We received
Speaker 1: feedback from our primary advisor that the name was inappropriately
Speaker 1: spun and failed to include additional perspectives. You can decide
Speaker 1: for yourself if this primary advisor exercising minute control over
Speaker 1: the Knife's operation is Keith Ranieri, I'm going to say yes.
Speaker 1: Their patreon currently has a hundred and four backers. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's more than mine does. Well. Yeah, they got a
Speaker 1: lot of money behind them, that's true. Yeah, wow, So
Speaker 1: that's everything. I'm exhausted now I'm too. I do see it.
Speaker 1: I see the board with the pictures and read thread.
Speaker 1: Now good. That was my whole goal here. I apologize
Speaker 1: that some of this was confusing. There's so much to
Speaker 1: keep track of. It made sense of speaking story, yea um,
Speaker 1: but that is almost everything about Keith Ranieri that I
Speaker 1: thought was relevant. I hope bad things happened to him.
Speaker 1: He's in prison. I hope bad things happened to him.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily when he's I would be fine if just
Speaker 1: a rock fell out of this guy and hit him,
Speaker 1: that would be okay. Yeah, I'd be fine with that.
Speaker 1: But it's crazy to think too, like he's touched so much,
Speaker 1: so who has totally internalized his crazy way of thinking
Speaker 1: and will continue it. I mean, I suppose, like without
Speaker 1: the charismatic leader, I don't know how much you have.
Speaker 1: I don't think Nexim's got much of a future. But
Speaker 1: there will be another Keith rawn Eerie. Maybe it will
Speaker 1: be someone who took some of his classes and does
Speaker 1: it a little better and a little bigger. Maybe it'll
Speaker 1: just be some other random guy. But or lady or
Speaker 1: lady or lady with an i Q of two forty
Speaker 1: and a judo championship when she was eleven, ye could
Speaker 1: be Yeah, it would be nice for one of these
Speaker 1: creepy cult leaders to be a lady soon. Well, Alice,
Speaker 1: we got close, Alison Mac we've ever and I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's breaking barriers. She is. We didn't get a
Speaker 1: lady president, but we got a lady co cult leader. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kind of the best part of it is that she
Speaker 1: cited Hillary Clinton in her like yeah, women Row hashtag
Speaker 1: girl power. Yeah, interview badass bitches, you know do stuff. Man,
Speaker 1: this makes me so disenchanted with pop feminism and the
Speaker 1: way we talk about feminism now, Like, yeah, bad bitches,
Speaker 1: we got this girls stick together. Jenner as a construct,
Speaker 1: it's not real. That's how I feel, well how he
Speaker 1: feels too. Yeah. My big thing like, always be scared
Speaker 1: of slogans. If somebody tells you you're a warrior a
Speaker 1: bunch of times, they're probably lying to you to get
Speaker 1: you to do something. For Uh, if somebody tells you
Speaker 1: you're a badass and you're not doing anything badass or
Speaker 1: the thing that you're doing is just letting someone hurt you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: then get the funk out. Yeah. Be afraid of catchy
Speaker 1: slogans that make you feel cool, because when people try
Speaker 1: to make you feel cool, they're trying to get you
Speaker 1: to do something. Definitely, and to realize that these kinds
Speaker 1: of people are not as obvious as we think from
Speaker 1: the outside. Man, I feel bad for bringing UCB into this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think you used to be. If you're listening,
Speaker 1: you guys are fine. Yeah, you do great shows, the
Speaker 1: Aspennies Classic unless we find out that Alison mac secretly
Speaker 1: the force behind all comedy theaters. That's entirely possible. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: one's disproved it. I do want to say that while
Speaker 1: you shouldn't trust anyone who calls you a badass, I
Speaker 1: think you are all badasses for listening to my show.
Speaker 1: So please download it and buy products that we advertise.
Speaker 1: This has been great and deeply unsettling good. That's what
Speaker 1: we shoot for here. You want to plug your things? Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm Anna and I am on Instagram. I make a
Speaker 1: web comic about things that make me sad but also cheese.
Speaker 1: It's called Bad Comics with an X by Anna with
Speaker 1: two ends. Uh and I'm also bad Comics by Anna
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Tweet at me. I'm currently in a feud
Speaker 1: with my uh nemesis and also boyfriend edgar Mon Plazier.
Speaker 1: I'm always looking for support because I drag him on
Speaker 1: Twitter a lot, so feel free to support me. Excellent.
Speaker 1: Uh and I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at I write okay to letters. I don't currently
Speaker 1: have any enemies, but if you would like to be
Speaker 1: my enemy, I am auditioning them. I've got a book
Speaker 1: called a Brief History of Ice you can find on Amazon.
Speaker 1: I also show up on the game Fully Employed podcast
Speaker 1: network stuff, so check them out. Uh. Now you can
Speaker 1: find Behind the Bastards online Behind the Bastards dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at at Bastard's pod our.
Speaker 1: Twitter also does not have an enemy, so you know
Speaker 1: you're welcome to do that to. Uh. This has been
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards. We're back every Tuesday, and we will
Speaker 1: be back next Tuesday. We get another bastard, so check
Speaker 1: us out. H h h h h