Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

This week’s guest is Theo Pratt, survivor of Gloriavale, an isolated Christian cult hidden deep in rural New Zealand, and author of Unveiled: A Story of Surviving Gloriavale. She’ll talk about being raised on the strictly controlled commune where people were assigned new names, women wore identical dresses and head coverings, and children weren’t taught the real days of the week—or even where they were in the world.Theo shares about the leader Neville Cooper’s self-proclaimed divine authority, how “smacking ladies” kept the kids in line—and guards kept the compound controlled, and her rebellious streak that led her to planning an escape attempt on a tandem bicycle. And of course, the moment she realized she couldn’t stay, and what it felt like to step into the outside world she’d been taught would destroy her. SOURCES: Unveiled: A Story of Surviving GloriavaleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renee DiResta, professor and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, joins the show again to dive deeper into disinformation, propaganda, and "pseudo-events," or manufactured controversies and news stories.She explains why it’s so difficult to tell fact from fiction online, how propagandists stoke real, often legitimate tensions to create division, how American politicians are amplifying false information instead of shutting it down, and possible policies that could help reduce our culty social media silos.SOURCES Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in AmericaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s guest is Renee DiResta, professor, and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality. In part one this week, she talks to Lola and Meagan about propaganda, disinformation vs. misinformation, and how social media algorithms push us all into highly individualized, “bespoke” realities.They discuss how she became interested in this topic after social media algorithms started suggesting anti-vaxxer content to her, how rage bait and other emotionally charged material spreads faster, and why social media makes it seem like other people have more extreme views than the majority of them actually do.SOURCES Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into RealitySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Lola and Meagan continue their conversation with Mike and Abbi Prussack, former members of Meagan’s childhood church, the 2x2s. In part 2, they walk the girls through the abuse crisis that has shaken the group in recent years and the long-standing patterns that allowed the harm to continue. Mike and Abbi explain how church leadership handled reports, why victims felt they had nowhere to turn, and how secrecy and obedience has shaped the culture for generations.They also discuss the FBI investigation, the community’s response, and what it has been like to help moderate the Ex 2x2 Facebook group during a moment of collective reckoning. The conversation looks at the cost of silence and the pressure to stay loyal, plus why so many people are choosing to finally speak out now. SOURCES Wings for TruthSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Lola and Meagan talk with Mike and Abbi Prussack, former members of Meagan’s childhood church, the 2x2s, also known as The Truth or The Way. The couple, who now help moderate the Ex-2x2 Facebook community, share what it was like growing up in a secretive religious group with no name, no building, and strict rules about who could be “in.”They open up about meeting and marrying within the church, the single question that shattered their faith, and how leaving forced them to rebuild their identities from scratch.Next week, part two dives into the FBI investigation, decades of hidden abuse, and what’s happening inside the group now that the truth is finally being exposed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.