MFM Presents…Trust Me

This is exactly right.

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Goodbye.

Hello.

Big news, everybody.

Exactly Wright's newest podcast, Trust Me, is finally here.

Trust Me is a show about cults, extreme belief, manipulation, and the people who've lived through it.

And it's hosted by two cult survivors, Lola Blanc and Megan Elizabeth.

Every week they talk to survivors, experts, and sometimes even people still inside these groups to figure out how belief can turn into control and what it takes to break free.

Today you're going to hear the story of artist and writer Akina Cox, who grew up in the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies.

It is a fascinating, powerful story, and it's the perfect example of why Trust Me is such an important show and why we're so excited to have them on the network.

So settle in and get ready to hear the first episode of Trust Me here on Exactly Right.

Now this is a two-parter.

So when you are done with this episode you're about to hear, head over to Trust Me's feed to hear part two, and then you can binge their back catalog of over 200 episodes.

Listen to Trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast, and make sure to leave a rating or review.

It really helps.

And now please enjoy Exactly Right's newest podcast, Trust Me.

Goodbye.

Trust me.

Do you trust me?

Would I ever lead you astray?

Trust me.

This is the truth.

The only truth.

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

Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief, and manipulation from two future brides who've actually experienced it.

I am Lola Blanc, and I am Megan Elizabeth.

Today, our guest is Akina Cox, artist and writer who grew up in the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies.

In part one today, we'll talk to her about the background on the church and leader, Reverend Moon, how her parents both joined by getting rides from members in the 70s and getting a subsequent invitation to dinner, and what it was like being a member of this group growing up.

She'll tell us about the mass wedding ceremony that she participated in, how her family moved to the border of North and South Korea, the lavish lifestyle the Reverend Moon was living while its members were often working long hours without pay, and how she began to question the church when she went to college.

And next week in part two, we will talk more about our current political landscape and the salon article she wrote about the parallels she sees between her upbringing in a cult and the Trump administration's ICE crackdowns.

Before we get to our guests, we do have a big announcement.

What is it, Lola?

Well, Megan, I think you already know this.

But for our listeners, we have transitioned to a new home and we are now at exactly right media.

So exciting.

This has been our dream network for so long.

We are so excited to make this move and so happy to be back with y'all listening to us.

Lola, do you know how we got on exactly right media?

Tell me, Megan.

I put exactly right on my vision board.

So here we are.

And I think that's magical thinking.

And I think you're wrong.

And that's what we do a lot on this podcast.

We think each other are wrong.

Indeed.

Which is maybe a good transition to explain to y'all who we are.

I am Lilla Blanc, resident skeptic.

And I am somebody who believed in a cult leader myself as a child.

I was originally a mainstream regular Mormon, and then a man swooped in and manipulated my mother.

And then I believed that he was a prophet of God.

And it was a scam.

It was a very harrowing experience for my mother.

He did prey upon her LDS beliefs and he has continued to do that with other people until we got out of it.

And ever since that experience, which you can listen to the full story of on episode one of this podcast, my mom was our very first guest.

But ever since then, I have been extremely interested in how people's beliefs get preyed upon by manipulators and how we are all influenced to believe crazy things and how it happens to people who are incredibly intelligent and wise and thoughtful and curious.

Because so many of our guests really are like that.

So I decided that I wanted to create a podcast that centered the survivors and centered the human experience of it and didn't make it this like scary thing, but like really showed people what it's like to have that experience.

And I was looking for somebody who could share that with me.

And I fortunately was introduced to Megan by a mutual friend.

And I got to hear a little bit about her story, which she can tell you about.

Yeah.

I mean, the beginning of this podcast is really interesting.

I was sitting with our mutual friend who's very, we're very good friends with him, but we'd never met before.

Like, for example, we're both going to his birthday tonight.

How did we never meet each other?

So weird.

Anyway,

I was sitting with him and he got a text and he was like, oh my God, my friend just asked.

if I know any therapists who grew up in a cult.

And I was a therapist at the time who grew grew up in a cult.

And I grew up in the two by twos, it's really exploding into the news right now because it's somehow been kept a secret for more than 100 years.

But some people call it the truth, the way, the worker religion, Kuniites, whatever you might call it.

Oh, I've never heard that one.

Yeah, there's a lot to it.

We actually have an interview with two ex-2x2s, Carrie and Kyle Hanks, that you can go listen to.

So, I'm fourth generation on both sides of my family.

My parents met through it

and uh

very odd growing up experience because it's kind of like being Amish, but you have to live in the normal world and go to normal school, but you just have to kind of look weird.

Like you have to be weird enough in the world that people are like, there's something special about you.

Is it Jesus?

So no television, long skirts, long hair,

really

scared to hell, lots of

religious trauma.

And And this podcast has been such a gift because I just keep getting to deconstruct with every episode that we do.

It's so amazing to be able to hear our guests' stories and connect with them and be able to joke about our experiences because that's very important.

It can't just be, we can't just live in the darkness, although sometimes a little darkness is necessary.

Yeah, sometimes a lot of darkness, sometimes a little darkness, but I think we always come back to being very life-affirming and hopeful and kind of the opposite of what cults teach us to be.

Yeah, we're all about that that post-traumatic growth, baby.

Resilience.

Yeah.

So, for the next segment that we do on this show, the cultiest thing of the week, I asked Megan what the most cult-like thing that she experienced that week is.

So, Megan, I would love to know what your cultiest thing of the week is.

Well, my cultiest thing was actually something that I read about in one of Akina's articles, which is this woman known as the MAGA Granny.

You've heard of her, of course.

Her name is Pamela Hemphill, and she went and rioted on January 6th, and Trump pardoned her, and she said no to his pardon.

She said that she was being led by something that was not her critical mind, and that she wants to serve her time and not be pardoned.

I mean, she did serve her time, but she still, you know, doesn't want the pardon.

That is.

So interesting.

And I want to have her on so badly.

I know, me too.

I mean, yeah, I'd be so curious to know.

I mean, and I did read a little bit about that when she first spoke out about that.

I'd be so curious to know more about just like what was going on for her when that happened, how she thinks about everybody else who's gotten the party, you know, like there's just so much there.

I want to know more about.

Yeah, one of the interesting things she said that makes it my cultiest thing of the week was that what got her out of her groupthink was that she started engaging with people on X that had different thoughts than her.

And they were like just being kind of conversational and not accusatory.

And she had, you know, interesting, good faith dialogues.

So that's actually also how Megan Phelps Roper, I believe, who was a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, that's also how she began to question and eventually leave that

horrible family.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, she was his daughter.

So

great story.

She was also just engaging with people who were having good faith conversations with her.

Yeah, not to say that always happens.

No, but it is really interesting and gives me hope when it does happen.

Yeah.

And I think next next week's episode, when we talk to her more, she kind of calls back to stuff like this.

So throwing it out this week.

What about you?

What's your cultiest thing of the week?

Well, this is another thing we will actually talk more about next week, but I feel I would be remiss in our first proper episode back if I didn't address our current political landscape.

Of course.

So, okay, we all know that Trump blames immigrants for all things in the world and, you know, generally anyone on the left and trans people.

He uses fear-mongering language about them.

And now there have been these horrific ICE crackdowns in which people are getting deported en masse at higher rates than ever before.

And I will say, like, Democrats were also engaging in too many ICE deportations, but this is now happening at a new level where people are being targeted simply for being brown.

And people who have the quote wrong perspective or think differently from what Trump wants are also being targeted.

These are all extremely culty things that are happening when you are demonizing a group of people and trying to eliminate anybody who is critiquing you.

He has used language like wanting to deport the worst, has used all this really, yeah, like fear-mongering language.

And I just want to shout out some statistics here because 72% of the people that have been recently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions.

Using their own scale that rates the threat of each detainee, 84% of people detained by ICE were deemed to be level one, which is no threat.

Of course, if somebody is committing a violent crime, sure, but that's not what's happening here.

And I will mention this next week as well, but the idea that immigrants are somehow more criminal than other people is false.

And it's actually the opposite because data consistently shows that undocumented immigrants commit less crimes than people who were born here.

A National Institute of Justice study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rates of U.S.-born citizens for violent crimes and a quarter the rate of U.S.-born citizens for property crimes.

Another report found that immigrants have consistently had lower incarceration than people that were born here for the last 150 years.

This has been true.

And meanwhile, the daily average of people being processed into the system has doubled since the beginning of this year because of an arbitrary quota coming from Trump, who wants to enact the biggest mass deportations in history.

And now, of course, with this big, stupid fucking bill, we've expanded ICE funding to unprecedentedly high levels.

And it is very, it's very alarming.

I

like, I would just would encourage folks, and I know that if anyone listening is a Trump supporter, I probably probably already lost him.

I already lost him.

But I would say, like, what I've been trying to do more of is look at some of what he writes and examine the language and the purpose of that language.

He, he did this like crazy Memorial Day post that's just using like rapists, criminals, evil, murderers, horrible, you know, like look at the language and what the goal of that language is.

And then what is the result that's actually happening?

Because what's happening right now is just that like people who are working in farms and paying taxes are being sent away for no reason.

Right.

That is not the America that I want to live in.

Well, as she says in clueless, doesn't say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty.

That is the correct way to end that comment and to end my rant.

Yeah, I have no good conclusion.

That's the truth.

I have no good conclusion.

It's very scary.

I hope that we all can work together to combat this.

Well, I think Akina gives us a lot of good perspective on how she grew up and what we can do moving forward.

So please listen to this week's episode, enjoy it, and listen to next week's as well because she gives some really great ideas.

Yeah, we will talk more next week about how to sort of manage

our emotional state and also feel like we're contributing something.

But for now, let's dig in.

Let's talk to Akina about her childhood in the Unification Church.

There's more to San Francisco with the Chronicle.

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There's more data insights to help with those day-to-day choices.

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I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the turning, River Road.

In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of of abuse.

But in 2014, the youngest escaped.

Listen to the Turning River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome, Akina Cox to Trust Me.

Thanks for being here in the studio with us today.

Yes, thanks for having me.

Okay, so we have you here with us today because you wrote an incredible article for Salon, right?

Yes.

About how you are seeing parallels between your childhood in a cult and our current administration and some of the behaviors with ICE.

Let's just start out talking about how you grew up because we have not done an episode on the Unification Church, aka the Moody's, since Steve Hassan, which is years ago at this point.

So tell us, how did your parents end up in the Unification Church?

Okay, so I'm a second generation member of the Unification Church, or I was before I left, which means that my parents joined, which is the situation for like a lot of people my age who grew up in the church.

A lot of our parents joined in the 70s or late 60s.

And then we were born, a lot of us, in the 80s, because Reverend Moon, who was the leader of the Unification Church, he did a lot of arranged mass weddings.

Both my parents were hippies and

they were born in the mid-50s.

So my dad barely barely escaped getting drafted into Vietnam.

And he was just hitchhiking across the country.

And he met someone who was chatting with him and told him about world peace and, you know, all these great things they could do together.

And then he went to get some free dinner with this guy.

And then

went to that second location.

Yeah.

What a like quintessential.

Yeah.

What year was that?

Do you know?

It was,

I'm guessing like 73.

Yeah.

I mean, when people were hitchhiking, a guy picks you up hitchhiking, tells you about world peace, and

feeds you.

Yeah.

And he feeds you.

That's exactly what you do.

And you eat the food they give you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, do you know, like, what was going on for him at that time?

Was that something he was really like searching for?

Was a message of peace?

Honestly, I feel like his story is

kind of emblematic of a larger story of like a bunch of kids who grew up right after World War II.

Like my grandparents, my granddads on both sides were in World War II.

And, you know, they came home and didn't really want to talk about it.

And there was pressure to be perfect.

And then all of a sudden, they're supposed to go off and fight.

in this Vietnam War, which sounded crazy.

And I think there was,

they felt like they couldn't trust the dominant culture.

Like they, they don't want to trust this government that's sending them off to war to die.

So then they're like more open for these other groups coming along.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, it makes so much sense.

And it makes me think about how this is such, we're in such a cold era again right now because there's such that like resistance to the establishment is very prevalent right now, understandably, because the establishment is doing terrible things on so many levels.

But yeah, I mean, we'll get into that later, but like just hearing you say that, I'm like, yeah, that's now.

I know.

I feel like when I first left the church and I would talk about my experiences with other people, there was this attitude of like, oh my gosh, that was so like an exotic time, you know, and you just kind of see it through the lens of a film camera, you know, like hippies in LA wearing flowy dresses and talking about world peace and, you know, eating vegan food or whatever and it felt like such a time that was inaccessible but it now feels like it's come back again where you're making it come back yeah i do i feel like i connected i know

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the Turning River Road.

In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

But in 2014, the youngest escaped.

Listen to the Turning River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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My dea makes the wow.

What about your mom?

How did she get?

So she joined in a similar way.

Okay, so she, I don't think, has been formally diagnosed with anything, but she sees spirits.

She's using air quotes.

Yes.

So

my theory is that she was off to college.

I think she was starting to have some like mental health issues.

She came home.

to Berkeley, California.

She didn't really want to talk about it with her family.

Understandably, I'm sure she was not sure how to explain it.

Like 70s mental health treatments were not that great.

Yeah.

Right.

So then she was like doing homework at the local library, met some guys who

wanted to give her a ride home.

And she took it.

A lot of rides happened.

Yes.

And

they invited her to come by their house for dinner.

And then, yeah.

So parents are kind of the perfect couple.

They love rides and dinner.

Which is funny because they're like not great cooks.

Like how to expect better food.

Lucky, I really, I cannot cook and I do not cook.

And if someone was like, I will give you food, I always say yes.

So that must have been a common tactic to look for people who needed rides.

It was a common tactic.

I heard that they often like recruiters would look for people with wearing backpacks because it meant you were like going somewhere or in school or in some period of transition.

And I mean, they tried this like all day, every day.

So I'm sure they talked to like a hundred people that day.

Right.

And my mom is the one that fell for it.

Wow.

And before you were born, presumably was when the mass wedding.

Yeah.

So

they were supposed to, back in the day, work for the church for many years before you have the option of getting married.

It was something like three or seven years, one of those where you're supposed to like essentially work for free and you're like volunteering 24-7, living out of a van, either going from like city to city, fundraising, selling little chach keys and trinkets and saying it's, you know, for your world peace or for your youth group or whatever.

Or they were living out of these church centers and just recruiting people from the nearby city.

And so they did that for several years.

And then they got married in the famous Madison Square Garden blessing.

Well, we call it blessing.

It's a mass wedding ceremony.

I think that was 1982.

I mean, it blows my mind how big this

was.

Can you tell us how big?

Their blessing was several thousand couples.

I want to say 3,000 or 3,000 people.

That's so crazy.

Yeah.

Can you just like, for those not familiar with the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies, they apparently say now that saying the Moonies is a derogatory term.

No, I've heard they sometimes go out, or they used to go after people for saying that, like it's a slur or something, but

you can call it whatever you want to me.

Right.

I mean, what was this group?

Paint a picture for those of you guys who don't know.

Yes.

So.

The Unification Church was started by Reverend Moon, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, in, I want to say, the 1950s in Korea.

So, after World War II, there was the Korean War.

I think it started around 1950.

And

he grew up in North Korea.

He escaped by essentially walking down to the end of South Korea because, you know, it's kind of like this very long peninsula.

So, we have an exciting origin story from this.

Yes.

Wow.

And I want to say there's like a million asterisks I'm laying in here because a lot of what he said was obviously not true.

Right, right, right.

Like, I heard this story that he like crossed the Han River, which is, um,

or no, maybe it was the Incheon River.

Anyway, he crossed this river with a man on his back that he carefully carried him down because this man wasn't able to walk.

And there's like a picture of it, like, in a bunch of church centers.

Turns out it's not the same guy.

It's like not Reverend Moon in that picture.

It's like,

it's like someone else, but everyone.

He's relying on white people's racism.

Well, it it was like, it was a very blurry, like black and white picture from the 1950s.

So,

yeah.

So, like,

everything is wrong.

Yeah.

But from his perspective, from his perspective, he went to the South Korea.

He started preaching.

There were a bunch of random cults in that area because my theory is, again, when, like, there's crazy upheaval, then there's more room for these cults to come about.

And so there were a bunch of other ones.

He seems to have gotten some ideas from some cults.

He starts to get popular.

He's getting in trouble with the law because he says he's anti-communist.

Maybe the problem was bigamy.

So

anyway, but he is getting bigger and bigger.

He moves to the States in 1971 and starts like going on these big speaking tours and getting lots of people to come.

And kids just start dropping out of high school, joining.

It kind of started a moral panic.

And we have people like deprogrammers who started kidnapping people who are in the cult because they're, you know, their parents were just like, where did these guys go?

That was one of the most interesting things about your story to me was that the deprogrammers for your parents became kind of a repeatable story of like, we escaped the deprogrammers.

Can you say a little bit more about that?

Okay.

So I grew up with these stories of my mom trying to smooth things over with her family being like, it's fine.

I'm in this group.

Don't worry about me.

Okay.

I'll meet up with you.

According to her, my grandmother did hire deprogrammers to come and kidnap her.

And she like acted like everything was fine.

And then my mom ran away as soon as she could and made made her way back to a church property.

Yeah.

The thing I'm just finding so fascinating with this story and also with everything these days is North Korea, obviously very cult-like culture.

Yeah.

You escape that, you start a cult.

Deprogrammers, getting people out of the cult in that era were very much their own cultic dynamic.

Yeah.

Were, you know, like, in essence, like very abusive a lot of the time.

Yeah.

Why can't we just respond to a cult culture by not creating a new one?

Like, it's so, why is it so hard for us?

It's a cult with an occult within a cult with an occult.

It's just never ending.

We react, you know?

Yeah.

And it's just so interesting the narratives that we make about what happened because to your mother, this was like a heroic story.

Like, I escaped the deprogrammers, which probably was partly valid.

Yeah.

Totally.

I later heard from another family member that it happened, like, according to them, like much more relaxed and you know they just wanted to talk to my mom but my mom saw them and thought I'm about to be kidnapped right and so they were actually like on a boat and my mom like jumped over the side according to her and just like swam away

when no one was looking wow but yeah so but that was before you that was way before I was born I think when I came along

Well, first of all, when people got married in the church,

if you're legally married to someone, then if they have like a psychotic break or if there's something wrong with them, then their spouse is in charge of them.

Right.

So once my mom got married, my grandparents couldn't really try and kidnap her anymore because I think what they were doing with the dupe programmers was they were kidnapping them, bringing them to a favorable judge who would say, this person can't make decisions for themselves.

And then they would have to get treatment.

I see.

Or, you know, they would have to at least be under their parents' like legal

controls in a good way.

Or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

So you can't really do that if someone is married because then it's just their partner that's becomes and now the partner is also in the group.

Yeah.

So they're right.

Okay.

Right.

So between that and then me being born, I think my grandparents were like, okay, we just want to like, let's see if we can like, not be all be friends, but, you know, not try and kidnap her anymore.

so that we get to see our grandkids sometimes right so what were some of the beliefs of the group so so it's um

kind of Christian and kind of weird

that describes like almost all of them so many it's like I feel like it's like very like Mormony adjacent where you're like oh we have the Bible then we have this other book right and this other book says this other guy is the new

yeah because he was prophety yeah he was Reverend Moon said he was the Messiah.

He was Jesus back in a new form because Jesus took a timeout when he got crucified.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he was picking it back up from there.

Yeah.

Jesus pleaded with him to take over when he was 15.

And he graciously accepted.

That was nice.

So sweet.

Yeah.

So he said, everyone has to be married.

Because that is the way to

erase original sin.

And then you can, if you go to a blessing and you have babies, then your kids are going to be born without original sin.

Oh,

perfect way to create more members.

Yeah.

So that was the gist of it.

There was like a lot of other stuff, like there's evil spirits everywhere.

And we're in a battle between good and evil.

And there was a sociologist who coined the term doomsday cult, and it was about the unification church.

It's just, it's a very kind of a textbook cult.

And a lot of textbooks were actually written about it in the 70s because I feel like it came into prominence like while sociology like was kind of really having a moment.

So also the term love bombing was invented by the church.

It was like really into like being really nice to people and getting them to join the cult.

So these marriages were arranged, right?

They were all arranged in the church.

What were other forms of control that that the church had over people's lives?

I'm like, what wasn't?

It was like,

I mean, in the beginning, people all lived together in like communes, kind of.

When I was like a baby, they started, people started to move out because we were all supposed to like move away and start our own like little

outposts, essentially.

But like, we all woke up really early on every Sunday morning to recite a pledge at five in the morning where we, you know, like reiterated.

It's almost like the Pledge of Allegiance, but it was longer and it was to the church or to Reverend Moon.

Do you remember it?

It changed around a little bit.

So like every five or 10 years, it would change the words.

There was something about blood, sweat, and tears.

There was something about vanquishing your enemy.

Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was like, it was a little bit more hardcore when I was a kid.

And then I feel like it tried to get a little softer when I was older, but, you know.

Wow.

Interesting.

And like, were these instructions coming from Reverend Moon or was there local leadership?

There was local leadership, but it was very much a top-down situation where we weren't supposed to really differ in any way.

Right.

From each other.

What were your thoughts about it?

How did you, like, yeah, how did you feel about it?

Um, I feel like when I was a kid, there was just so many opportunities to do something wrong that I was really caught up in the like,

you know, you weren't supposed to date, you weren't supposed to, you're supposed to not really talk about the church to most outsiders.

This is like the group I grew up in.

This is like the two by twos.

Yeah, we're not supposed, we're supposed to act so different that people go, What group are you in?

Oh my god, same.

No,

Okay.

So yeah.

Yes.

And then there was this whole idea that there's like evil spirits everywhere and you have to

appease them or you're, or you're like fighting them or whatever.

You know, you have to do.

That would scare you.

Evil spirits.

She, yeah.

I remember talking about my sleep paralysis demons.

Yeah.

And I feel like there's something similar with Mormons where Mormons, they uh baptize dead people, but we wouldn't marry dead people.

You'd marry dead people.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

What do you mean?

So,

ostensibly, you would like go and pay for them to get blessed.

Like, you would say, Oh, my grandparents died before they could get married in the church.

I will pay money, and then in the spirit world, they'll be married.

And so, they'll be saved

because they can go to heaven.

Are dead people marrying other dead people?

So, mostly,

but

when I

why are we laughing?

Because you know what's coming when I was like eight, I went to a mass wedding.

I was in the nosebleed section because it's often happens in stadiums.

Yeah.

And I saw like, you know, rows of big girls wearing pretty dresses, which was exciting.

And then at some point, I hear the

announcer saying, like, so-and-so is getting married to Buddha.

So-and-so is getting married to Saint Francis.

So-and-so is, I don't know, just like listing off all these famous dead people that are getting married to women who were on the stage.

Wow.

And I was so far away.

I didn't see that these were like 80-year-old women who were just like getting married to a dead person.

Oh my God.

I thought, I thought, like, I was like, oh, is that an option for me?

Am I going to like apply to be

Elvis or something?

Yeah.

And they'll be like, here's, I don't know, general patent or something.

You know, like,

I was like, are they going to, like, how do you check a box to make sure you're not giving a dead person?

Because I don't want that.

That would have kept me up at night.

Yeah.

That was a little scary.

Yeah.

Aside from that, was it exciting?

Like, what was that like seeing those ceremonies?

They were long.

Boring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It wasn't like going to a pop concert.

Okay.

So apparently Whitney Houston was supposed to sing at one of the blessings in Washington, D.C.

in like the late 90s.

And she backed out last minute.

And I was there and I would have been so excited to see her.

I'm so sorry.

Freaking jerk.

Yeah.

That might have been one of our worst

things that happened in the story.

Just kidding.

No, it's so traumatic.

I mean, how is he choosing who marries who?

So for my parents, it was like everyone, who is eligible and whose central figure or like their local pastor said it was okay.

They would go to a big room and there'd be like women on one side, men on the other, and you just go down bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, kind of just like be like, you and you or maybe you and like just take a second.

And then when I came along, it was supposed to be, well, he, he still arranged people in person sometimes, but he was like kind of retired from that.

You could also just send in your picture and they would like pick out a picture of a dude and send it back to you.

How many of these marriages were successful?

Do we know?

Um,

well, according to the church, they were

very successful.

And

so I did end up going to one when I was 21, I want to say.

And

of all my friends who were in one, most of them have gotten divorced, obviously.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

And there's like a couple of us left.

And then there's like a couple of people who are like like still really in the church and have a bunch of kids.

Wow.

Yeah.

We went to one.

Do you remember that?

No.

You went to a you don't remember?

No.

Wow.

Wait, you went to what?

We went to a unification church Sunday service out of curiosity because it was like when we first, first, first started the podcast and we hadn't even aired yet.

We went to Pasadena?

Possibly.

It was in like, I thought it was in more of like an outskirts town, maybe, but it might have been.

Yeah.

Like we were thinking maybe we would do an episode on it, but it was so boring that there just wasn't enough to talk about.

That's a tactic, don't you think?

Where it's just like, because I feel like, again, the two by twos kind of do that.

They make it so boring that you're like hypnotized and somehow they're not really saying anything, but you think they've said something smart.

Yeah, well, that's what I talked about in the essay.

I was noticing that Trump kind of also does that.

It's called the shotgun argument, where they just tell you a lot of random points all at the same time.

And the point is not to

overwhelm you with their intellect, but just to kind of stun you.

And so you don't have a foothold of like how to argue back.

Right.

So fascinating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it works because you just disassociate so much and it just goes straight into your brain.

That's so interesting to me, though, because I feel like the people who seem to want to stay in the cults the most are the ones who are having more heightened emotional experiences.

But mine was like the fear was going straight into my anxiety.

The anxiety was, but like the thoughts weren't going through my critical mind.

I was just beamed with fear, but it didn't make sense what they were even saying because it doesn't make sense.

Mormon church used to be three hours long when I was growing up.

And it was so fucking boring.

But sometimes like a missionary would go up or you'd have an engaging bishop and he would like start crying.

And I don't know why I'm saying he.

I feel like I only remember it being men for some reason.

But somebody would go up and bear their testimony and it'd be really moving.

And those would be the talks that I'd be like, I believe in this church.

It wouldn't be the boring guys ever.

Give me a testimony.

When I was a kid, when it was like, time for that at camp, I'd be like, yes, tell me your life story.

Were you into it?

Were you like, I want to give my testimony?

I love this church.

Well, so when I was a kid, again, I feel like I was just mostly anxious all the time because there were so many ways to sin or do something wrong, or, you know, and my parents were like, you know, had anger issues and were abusive in different ways.

So I was more like, just like survival mode and like, okay, yeah, let me try and do everything perfectly to, you know, fit in here.

And when I was 16, I did have a moment where I was like, oh, I think there's something to this church.

Interesting.

And I like got really into it for like, I feel like a year or two.

That was also a time where, so we're skipping ahead a bit, but

I had been raised on the Jersey shore mostly.

And then my parents, because my mom had a vision from God, decided to move us to Korea.

This was in the year 2000.

And she moved us to the border of North and South Korea.

So so close that we could like hear the North Korean speak loud system.

Wow.

Yeah, it was very close.

And we were in the middle of nowhere, like absolutely in the middle of nowhere.

And like you had to to walk two miles through rice patties to get to a bus station.

And I think part of me was just like, almost had this moment where I was like, okay, I need to like belong here.

Otherwise, I'm going to lose my mind.

Right.

That makes sense.

So I got really into it.

And then I went to college and I heard a lecture about critical thinking about like how to tell.

what kind of arguments people are using against you, like the straw man fallacy or whatever.

It was just like a one hour lecture, lecture, but I remember reading it or like listening to the lecture and being like, oh my gosh, this is great.

I will understand more about the church through this because I'll be able to make these critical arguments in support of the church.

Wow.

And then I went back to my dorm room and I tried to read church material and I was like, oh, oh, shit.

Oh, no.

What did that feel like?

I just, I, I took my books, my church books, and I just threw them in the back of my closet.

And I was like, I'm not going to think about this for a little bit.

That sounds like a good, that sounds like a good plan, to be honest.

Yeah, that's what I would do today.

That's for later.

Yeah.

So then it took me a few more years.

And then, like, finally, there was a moment like in my mid-20s where I was like, okay, now it's time to leave.

Wow.

Wow.

What a great argument for having critical thinking classes in school.

I know.

I want to go back a little bit though, because before you moved away, you were in New Jersey.

Were you on like a compound?

No.

So when I was born, my parents lived in the New Yorker Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, which is a building owned by the church.

And like a bunch of church families lived in it at the time.

And then Rebber Moon was like, you all need to leave because you need to like start your own outposts because if we're all together, we can't get more people to join the church.

So my parents moved an hour south to the Jersey Shore.

And I grew up mostly there, but then we would do church stuff on the weekends or in the summers.

But then during the week, I sometimes was going to public school and just had to like pretend I was normal, which was impossible.

Wow.

Yeah.

It was impossible.

It was like, I was like, really, it's so hard.

I forget

so hard.

Yeah.

Well, at least you have a normal name.

My name is Akina.

And this is the 90s on the Jersey Shore.

Do you know how many Laurens I went to school with?

Yep.

Yep.

And I was like, And they were like, what's your name, Akina?

Why are you wearing like weird, baggy, stained clothes?

Like, or like just like big clothes to hide your body because you're modest?

Oh, was that a thing?

Yeah, girls are the devil.

And, you know, we

blah, blah.

As we all know, as we all know, yes.

So would that, like, if I were walking down the street in the 70s, would I be able to identify who the Moonies were?

You probably wouldn't.

Okay.

But there were giveaways.

There was like a lot of times they were selling flowers on street corners of the city or yeah, that was the biggest thing was they were like selling things like little trinkets.

But I feel like I can, I'm like, I can tell because oftentimes if someone was getting blessed, they would wear a blessing ring.

And so it's like, there's like little tells if you are a church member.

I can also tell and no one else from your church.

Yeah.

And other members wouldn't be able to tell.

But I'm like, oh, that, yeah.

And I'll ask and they'll usually be.

I was convinced I had that power as well for Mormons.

I did identify successfully other Mormon children in random places like

I'm sure they loved that.

No, it was like a bonding thing.

Oh, okay, but you were a child as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, I thought this was yours.

No, you were

a child.

She's in a playground.

Parents are calling the cops.

That would be like, hey, you have fellow 12-year-old who looks awkward here.

And they often had CTR rings too.

That was one of our giveaways.

Choose the right.

Every kid had a CTR ring.

Amazing.

Well, I mean, in the two by twos, they say that we can tell each other because of the spirit and it's not because of the bun or the or the long dress.

Long dress and the like very specific type of long dress.

It's the spirit.

So keep that in mind.

Yeah.

So you were allowed to go to college.

So what was the policy on or the thinking on outsiders versus us?

So outsiders were being controlled by Satan.

Sure.

Uh-oh.

And

we needed to like win them over, but they needed to be approached very carefully.

And they were essentially our enemy, but they didn't know that.

And so it was very confusing for a kid to navigate.

Yeah.

I was allowed to go to college.

You're right.

But it was frowned upon.

And a lot of my friends went and did like a two-year program, at least in between, very again, similar to Mormons.

It's like Mormons with the Asian twist.

But they were doing a two-year program where they were going out not so much to proselytize, although that did happen, but again, to fundraise and make a shitload of money for the church because they were just like cute 18-year-olds.

They were just sending out to random street corners in random cities with like a bucket of wind chimes or flowers and being like, you know, selling them in cash for 12 hours, 16 hours a day.

So a lot of people are pushed to do that.

My parents are a little bit strange in that they were very devout, but they did not want me going on that program.

There were kids who were badly injured and in a couple of cases were killed on that program.

How?

So there were a few fatalities because they were sending out teams of these teens in vans and they were working sometimes for 24 hours.

Like they would sometimes do, like, it was almost like a fasting thing where they would, instead of fasting, they would be just fundraising for 24 hours.

They were insanely sleep deprived driving these large vans.

So there were a couple, at least one or two car crashes.

Then they had also sent out a teenager and she was murdered because she like knocked on the wrong door.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

So I had at the time been trying to get my parents to let me go on this mission because like all my friends were going.

And I, I was so tired of being like the only church kid at a school and not knowing anyone.

And I had wanted to go and then I was like, oh, they're never going to let me go.

But yeah.

So to my knowledge, that program is still going on today.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Well, that leads me to a question I have about the

money.

Like, where?

Yeah.

What was happening?

I feel that's a really good question.

And I feel like the story is undertold, even though it's been like right under our noses the whole time.

So basically, ever since the 70s, when Reverend Moon was here, he was like starting businesses and like putting his henchmen in charge.

So there was like nominally

not super related to the church, but definitely related to the church.

And so he was like plowing this money back into the church and back into these businesses.

And then with those profits, he was also donating them to politicians, to think tanks.

Really?

He started a right-wing newspaper decades ago called the Washington Times.

So

he's like kind of

the story behind MAGA, in my opinion, is that like, I don't think MAGA would exist without Reverend Moon because he started the Washington Times.

He gave a voice to these Republican, conservative politicians.

He gave them tons of money.

They would do things like, I even noticed, we spoke about January 6th.

I even noticed on January 6th, Matt Gates

got up in front of Congress and said, oh, it's Auntifa who is in charge of January 6th.

The Washington Times said so, and he like had an article from them with him.

And so I feel like they've done that a lot.

Like they would write an article and and like either Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity would pick it up in the 90s or the 80s, or and then like some congressman would use it as something they could point to

to give them evidence.

Yeah, validity.

It feels like family values were really at the core of the message.

It was very much anti-communism.

And then it became like, yeah, traditional family values and anti-gay, anti-feminist, just

a bunch of boring dudes screaming.

Really, and just like causing a lot of trouble, not only in America, but they've done this to other countries as well, where they just like really, I feel like, are responsible for a right-wing lurch.

Like by buying up a media.

Yeah, by buying it up, by starting it.

Like Reagan said the Washington Times was his favorite newspaper and he read it every day.

Wow.

Yeah.

The amount of influence that you can have when you buy a freaking newspaper.

Yeah.

It's wild.

Yeah.

And for a long time, like they were there before Fox Media.

They were there before OAN.

OAN started in their offices.

Fox News, like they have Washington Times contributors on there.

They kind of like were the mama newspaper to like birth all these like shitty conservative

media companies.

Yeah.

So they're all connected.

Wow.

That is fascinating.

And more than that, he like gave money to Reagan.

He was like very involved with the Bush family, Reverend Moon.

He gave them tons of money.

Even though Reverend Moon died in 2012, the Unification Church, like they paid Trump to speak at one of their things just like a few years ago, like in 2022.

Bush spoke a lot.

Yeah.

Like they were locked in.

They were locked in with Bush.

Was he taking money for himself was ever moon like living lavish he he's very much a trump guy like in that he bought up a crapload of properties in the 70s like a whole university in in connecticut farms in in hawaii a seminary in upstate new york a a skyscraper in midtown manhattan as one does yeah he and his family had property everywhere

and like was he enriching like was he living a very lavish lifestyle himself?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Golden toilet.

I don't know about the toilet situation.

I know he had like helicopters and, you know, his wife was always head-to-toe like designer gear.

But the members were not living lavish.

No, the members were working for nothing.

Like, I heard from someone who did work at the Washington Times when it started that they were ostensibly paid, quote, air quotes.

They were paid for their time working but they would be handing out the checks on a friday and be like hey does anyone want to um

like money is tithe get paid this week yeah does anyone want to tithe and like so you'd have to like tithe in front of your coworkers so you're all church members so there are just like a lot of church members who are working for nothing or either volunteering their time or working for church businesses, you know, making hardly anything which is so common and i wonder like was there any chatter about that disparity and that being was that a problem for anyone i don't remember hearing about that because i remember hearing like well reverend moon is like the biggest king of them all so he should like and he's meeting with presidents he's meeting with kings and queens he needs to like be at their level Oh, of course.

That would make sense.

You're like, okay,

where do I sign?

Take all my money.

I will will live in poverty.

Yes.

Right.

Wow.

So interesting.

Okay.

So did your parents, did they remain in the church?

They remained, but around when Reverend Moon died in 2012, like in the couple years leading up to that, his large family kind of exploded into factions.

And my parents went with the youngest son, whose name is Hyungjin, or he calls himself Sean in America, Sean Moon.

So the Reverend's youngest son, your parents decided to follow, but the wife also was a leader, right?

Because the reverend's wife, Reverend's wife, yeah, he was trying to pass her and give like the power to his sons at first.

And she seems to have taken over the like kind of main church branch.

It was photos of her on the wall, and they were talking about the mother when we went.

Yeah, so people probably call her, they call her true mother.

And so, she's, I think, living in Las Vegas Vegas or South Korea or both.

And she's

taken over the main church branch.

And my parents are part of a splinter cult now called Sanctuary Church or also Rod of Iron Ministries.

And they got in the news a few years ago because, like, do you guys know this?

They, they got in the news a few years ago because they were.

um all had a bunch of ar-15s and had this big like marriage rededication ceremony but bring your assault rifle Whoa,

okay, this sounds familiar.

Yeah, if you go, yeah, if you google sanctuary church, I'm looking for a picture of an assault rifle.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I mean, it's probably a picture of my dad.

You're probably looking at a picture of my dad.

It's a bunch of old ladies.

Okay, maybe my mom.

This is wild.

Yeah.

Why did they choose him, do you think?

Okay, so when my parents moved to South Korea with me when I was a teenager, my dad started an English-speaking service in Seoul.

There were like a few expat church members out there, but there wasn't really a place for them.

And then Sean Moon moved to Seoul and he started his own, and then they combined.

And so by the time this break happened, my parents and him had been working pretty closely.

for, I want to say, like almost 10 years, like more than five.

And so it was very natural for them to go with him.

I see.

Splinter groups are endlessly fascinating to me.

At first, there's so many

Mormon offshoot.

Like, yes, there's just, there are so many.

How do you decide?

There's which prophets

just started as we're speaking.

Yeah.

And there should be a BuzzFeed article that's like, which offshoot?

Which offshoot?

Which kind of sourdough bread are you?

Please pitch that.

I'm curious if when the Reverend died, if there was any legend around him being immortal or if this was shocking or if it changed anything so not a ton okay there was this idea that like he had really wanted north and south korea to unite before he died and there was like this big church event that happened around then that they were hopefully trying to work for so It's like, no, it wasn't one of those cults where they were like, he's never going to die.

Okay.

Okay.

But I think there were, I think if they weren't lying to themselves, they would have said they had hoped for something more to happen before he died.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

So you have this crack when you go to college.

Yeah.

Was there something specific that led you to like revisit some of those doubts?

So I tried to ignore it because even though I'd been like friendly with outsiders, I didn't have anyone I like really relied on.

Anyone like I was so used to just like faking my life around them.

Um, so it was like, oh, if I believe this, I lose my family and my community.

And I did not want that.

So I ignored it.

I got married in the church.

Was it a mass wedding?

Yeah.

Oh.

But my husband and I were supposed to have an arranged marriage, but we already knew each other and we already liked each other.

And so then when our parents were like, how about this person?

We were like, okay.

But we were like secretly making out.

and then we went through the blessing, and everyone was like, You guys, like, this is a sign that the blessing really works.

It really worked a miracle, yeah.

Well, because when we came along, sometimes your parents could also bless you, so we like, so our parents they like chose us, but I see, yeah, how many couples were there?

So, they said 400 million because they were counting dead people.

Oh, cool.

I don't know how many.

I was looking this up the other day because I was like, how many were there?

And it was like,

no, there's 400.

I was like, were there even 400?

I don't know.

And

so I, I think there was like a couple thousand, maybe a thousand.

That's wild.

Yeah.

That's wild.

I want a photo.

Do you have a photo of it?

I do have some photos.

They're like blurry, and you can be like, there's Akina

in that row.

What did it feel like?

It felt kind of terrible.

I've been thinking about it lately because now I'm 40 and, you know, I got blessed when I was 21.

And I thought I was an old maid.

I thought I was a spinster.

You guys, there were girls who were getting blessed that I had babysat.

They were like 16.

Wait, what girls were getting married at 16?

Yeah, just a few of them.

I know.

It was one of those things where like I've been sitting with him thinking about it a lot lately.

And I'm like,

that was like way more traumatic than I remember, which is like, is not all of our childhood.

Yeah.

Like, especially the cult, the cult life.

But you're like, oh, we were all coerced into that.

Like,

even though I loved the person I was getting married to, I was like getting married with all these people.

A lot of them I didn't know.

And

he and I, I don't think we would have ever chosen to be married at that young age, even though we liked each other a lot.

And then all the, all the girls the night before, I was like, we were in a dormitory and I just remember girls running around and like crying, like, they were

like they didn't know their partner.

They were like 20 or 19 and had just gotten off of a van where they were fundraising for a year and they were told like, this is the guy.

And some of them, some of them were crying.

So, yeah, and then there were like 16 year olds or, you know, 19 year I don't remember anyone like older than us that was like, you know, even in their mid-20s.

Wow.

Yeah.

It was really brutal.

Yeah, that's devastating.

What if you get someone with bad breath also?

Yeah, there's like so many jerks and like just so many.

And like you're wearing like, there were so many ugly dresses too.

Could you pick out your dress?

I actually what we were able to.

I've heard now you can't pick out your dress.

You just have an ugly dress, which your mother picks out for you.

Terrible.

Oh, okay.

My dress was kind of cute.

It was like asymmetrical ruching.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, then I guess it's all time.

Yeah.

I feel bad.

Never mind.

Wow.

I mean, do you still keep in contact with people?

Some,

I still keep in contact with some of my good friends.

like the girl who was sitting like to my right when we were getting blessed.

Yeah.

We still talk.

So when when we were growing up, they called us blessed children because we were from the blessing.

And we were told that we were all brothers and sisters.

And so we had to really take care of each other.

And so that kind of made it almost easier to leave because I remember some of my friends telling me, like, I have a secret boyfriend or I, you know,

I might be gay or I don't know something.

And I remember thinking like, it was drilled into me that this is my brother or sister.

Like, I'm, that bond is going to remain.

And even when I thought I was a true believer, if people came and told me things like, I made out with a guy, I don't know what to do,

I would absolutely hold their secrets and like not tell anyone.

And so, I feel like you know, I'm not friends with everyone from the church, or you know, like, I feel like I have a lot of good feelings towards everyone.

Like, I know what a terrible childhood we all had, and I wish everyone the best, even if I'm not in contact with them.

But I still, still, I feel like I still love everyone.

Wow.

It sounds somewhat unique in that, you know, so much of the time we hear about a culture within a cult of ratting on everyone, like it being required to ratting on.

There was definitely like,

yeah, there was definitely a lot of trauma that we all had to do.

I think for me, even like.

if we were acting kind of shitty to each other when we were teens or, you know, like some, like some girl like ratted me out for like having not dress code at camp i was still a little bit annoyed with her still a little resentment there but i'm like we were all teens like what else were we gonna do yeah you know like i i feel like i absolutely have forgiveness in my heart for any other blessed child and i'm sure i offended or hurt other people and i would definitely be happy to ask for forgiveness i feel like i have a harder time forgiving a lot of the first generation who raised us.

Right.

I'm like, I know you were damaged and that's why you joined, but honestly, like, what the hell, guys?

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

One of the other things that you said that really interested me was how demonized therapy was.

Oh, yeah.

And how that's just a warning that you're probably in a high control group.

Can you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah.

So it wasn't just therapy.

It was like kind of like all medical professionals were

a little bit treated suspiciously, especially therapists because

I think because they were so scared of the church in turn.

But I did go get regular checkups when I was a kid.

I think a lot of that was also like I was going to public school and I needed to get like vaccinations.

I did have a health, like health issues that like kind of got ignored for a while.

A lot of people didn't even go to regular doctors.

It was like, don't, don't even go if you have cancer.

And there's actually like, it feels like a very huge crossover between that and like the RFK.

I was just gonna say.

Yeah, because there's like people being like, you can pray your cancer away or just drink this special tea or whatever, you know, there's a lot of that too.

So it wasn't necessarily specifically don't talk about your emotions with a person because it might expose us.

It was more just like the oh, no, I think that was still there.

It was just everything.

I have so many more questions about this.

I think this would be a good time to break and pick this back up in the next episode.

She's so cool.

I know.

I know.

Also, I want her to be a voice actor.

I just want her to be my friend.

Well, that too.

I asked her when you went to the bathroom.

She seemed hesitant.

Come on a little strong.

Okay, Megan, would you join the Unification Church?

Okay, so if it's the 70s, right?

I think I might.

Go on.

I like flowers, freedom.

Okay.

There was a lot of like,

we're not working for the man.

Like, we're going to live on a commune and be in the sun and make our own garden.

I'd like that.

Make our own garden?

Yeah, I just feel like there's a garden there.

You just have decided that there was a garden involved somewhere.

I just would like it.

I just think I would like it.

I like it, it sounds like it started with things that I would like.

I wouldn't like him, probably,

the reverend.

Yeah.

But I can just see myself being swept away and maybe some of the excitement of selling trinkets on the street and getting hitchhikes and free meals.

And I would join it.

I just know I would.

Yeah, I could see that for you.

For sure.

I know.

It's just, it's so,

I'll never, I'll never stop being fascinated by this sort of like hippie Christian cult combination.

Yes, endlessly fascinating.

Hippie, just like my idea of what it meant to be a hippie growing up just seemed so like the antithesis of being in like a strict Christian church, but like so much of that movement turned into these like Christian cults.

Yeah, and that's why you see them having so many weird different kinds of rules because they were like, well, then we can do this actually and we can do this actually.

It's just like picking and choosing from mismatch.

Yeah, it's very interesting.

She referenced in this interview, uh, like creating a BuzzFeed quiz.

I think it would be a fun BuzzFeed quiz to pick which

belief systems you want to pull from and like create your own.

We actually have to do that.

That's because BuzzFeed still exists.

Yeah, okay.

Shout out.

Anyway, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

Please rate us five stars.

If you don't have five stars, don't rate us at all.

Share it with your friends.

And as always, remember to follow your gut.

Watch out for red flags.

And never, ever trust me.

Bye.

This has been an exactly right production, hosted by me, Lola Blanc, and me, Megan Elizabeth.

Our senior producer is G.

Holly.

This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

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

Our theme song was composed by Holly Amber Church.

Trust Me is executive produced by Karen Kilgareth, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can find us on Instagram at Trust Me Podcast or on TikTok at TrustMe Cult Podcast.

Buy your own story about cults, extreme belief, or manipulation?

Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail.com.

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

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The detective comes driving up fast and just like screeches right in the parking lot.

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