The Ex-JW Creative

00:18 - Sam (Host)

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work the Gundagara land and people. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today. I recognise the deep connection that First Nations people have to this land, their enduring culture and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded and it always was and always will be, aboriginal land.

00:58

Hey there and welcome to Beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control or cult communities and are deconstructing their faith. I'm your host, sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced and the insights they've gained. Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place. This is Beyond the Surface. Welcome, scott. Thanks for joining me.

01:41 - Scott (Guest)

My pleasure.

01:43 - Sam (Host)

I like to start these episodes by asking people where in the world you are, and I suspect there is going to be a weird clash between where you are and the voice that everybody is hearing. But where in the world are you?

01:56 - Scott (Guest)

I tend to skip around the planet a little bit more than the average person, so I'm right now living in Aotearoa, in Otatahi, christch in. New Zealand and I've been based here for the last five months. I'll be leaving soon, but I love this place. It's been an incredible summer in the southern hemisphere first time living down here, but I'm based. I'm from northern USA.

02:18 - Sam (Host)

You're the Canadian border in Wisconsin where are you headed to after New Zealand?

02:23 - Scott (Guest)

back to my home world. Actually, I haven't lived there for 25 years. I visited a couple of times in the last couple of decades, like once every five or 10 years. But yeah, I'll be going back to visit family. I haven't. I have a grandparent who's passed and one who's like hanging on.

02:39 - Sam (Host)

So I'm visiting, right.

02:40 - Scott (Guest)

Okay, which ties into the story actually.

02:50 - Sam (Host)

It's not just trying to be heavy, yes, no, absolutely. I love it. So I pretty much start all of these episodes with a very vague question, which typically lets the conversation go in 101 different directions but where does your story start?

03:02 - Scott (Guest)

Oh, wow, okay, I would say my grandparents of note I've just mentioned joining a religious cult, you know, for what they thought were good reasons in their retirement, and then that influencing my parents or my dad and then influencing us as kids back in the late 80s, early 90s, and maybe when it comes down to the movie I made about indie rockers who are cult escape artists from that community, my story probably starts in the being an indie rock band and playing in those spaces from a pretty young age and writing a couple albums and then finding out that there's actually interesting and kind of cool people in the cult who are also musicians that were like, oh, I could like lean into that part of the cult and eventually made a movie about that yes, okay, so give in case people want to go and watch it before listening to the rest of this episode about your story and want some context.

04:05 - Sam (Host)

What is witness underground?

04:07 - Scott (Guest)

witness underground is a rockumentary, has three parts, basically exploring a community inside of a cult through the lens of many musicians and indie filmmakers. And then what changed that? Like, tragically, like dissolved and exploded that scene in a you know negative way. Um, it was across five states, um, for about 17 years and has incredible archive of music. They're very talented non-christian, like secular artists in a religious cult. And then what music they made about successfully navigating cult mind control, to kind of point a finger at the problem and also this transformative, life-changing experience that they went through amazing, and I mean the.

04:51 - Sam (Host)

We've thrown around the word cult. We've not actually specified who we're talking about here, but, for clarity, we are talking about the jehovah's witness, um, and so I'm curious what it was like for you growing up in that environment.

05:12 - Scott (Guest)

Well, it started with an indoctrination course, which is real weird. As a kid, instead of like playing games or playing with my siblings, or like watching TV or cartoons or Legos which I did, all of those things, but also here, where are these headphones? And you know, walk them in and like push, play and then follow in this text only book and like, try to answer the question and the answer is, you know, sentence three in every paragraph um, and it's just like ongoing, like there's someone made a piece of art in Australia, um, sarah Riches. It's a beautiful piece of art, she makes tons of cool stuff, but it's like putting a cassette tape into your forehead, like your, your head's the Walkman, as like a part of just to like create a piece of beautiful art that like exemplifies that moment.

05:46

Yeah, um, but yeah, lots of strange navigation, because I, my mom, didn't join, so we always had we have family that were like Methodist, lutheran, non-denominational Christian and lots of friends that we had access to throughout our whole lives, me and my siblings. So we kind of had a quite a balanced view. It was like, oh, this is actually the real extreme group over here, not our family, and like it's it's like constantly this tension of trying to have a foot in two worlds and not really sure what's real, because everyone's saying something else.

06:18

Something completely conflicting is real, um. So in a way it was kind of balanced view of a balanced way of having an uh influence, being influenced by a cult where a lot of people most people are either like they joined it as an adult or they were raised in it from birth with like no external influences aside from, like you know the pg movies you're allowed to watch or the pop music on.

06:41 - Sam (Host)

You know top 40 hit radio that you're allowed to listen to yeah, I mean, I hear you say balanced, and I go for a kid, I'm thinking. Also confusing, though, like to have mom believing this one thing and then dad believing this other thing and having that sort of like very indoctrinated perspective of you have to believe this and this is the only right thing to believe. That's confusing as well, as you know.

07:08 - Scott (Guest)

Balanced from, I guess, heavy indoctrination, but confusing nonetheless yeah, and maybe the first set of confusion that got that made me really skeptical was when I was six and my mom's dad not never part of that religion, but always read the bible while smoking his pipe in the living room um kind of guy.

07:25

He died and the entire extended family was like, oh, he's in heaven now. And as a kid you're like what is death? You know, like a little fascinated by what's real and what's not. Um, and this whole fantasy world and people have made up or, you know, believe, for whatever reasons, and then having this new religion influencing our lives, saying definitely he's not in heaven, he was a part of the wrong religion. It's like whoa, what, what, which one is true, you know? And then being like every time I ever, when I then I learned to pray because we were just my dad was just being going to church for the first time ever and trying to get us like talking to this deity and all of the prayers forever for like a year, we're like why won't you let like my grandpa into heaven? God, I want a plus one for grandpa like make it happen.

08:15

What the hell like with anger, like frustration, that he's this unjust being who only likes certain people and hates everyone else yeah and ultimately that's their main. One of their main ideologies is like you have to be part of this religion and even then you.

08:29 - Sam (Host)

There's no guarantee because, like, we don't even trust each other I mean all of the the confusion, but also the purity of just like a six seven year old like why. Like this doesn't make any sense. Like if you know, if there's this wonderful place and we get to go there, why would he not get to go there also. Like it's both heartbreaking and also immensely pure of like the brain capacity of a six seven-year-old.

09:01 - Scott (Guest)

Yeah, also like existential crisis inducing like, okay, death is already enough to handle, but not knowing like having everyone basically fight about it fight about what's happening after? Yeah it's a little bit too much to handle for a kid, I think oh, absolutely.

09:20 - Sam (Host)

I mean, I have a pretty big gripe with um. I guess kids, like particularly young kids, and even you know preteen, sort of early teen ages, having to make eternal life choices about, like, giving their life to whatever deity it is in that religion. But you know, the brain capacity and developmental stages at that point is just, you know, you, just you can barely see the end of the week, let alone the end of eternity. Um, so it's, it's just like from a cognitive perspective it's just not possible. Um, and yet it's happening every day. Um, I'm curious what it was like and whether it was a different experience for you as someone who was not born in this community but essentially was a convert to this community, and were you treated differently because of that?

10:18 - Scott (Guest)

Oh, actually, yeah, that's a. There's a thing like the witness, the witnesses will They'll treat new members with a classic manipulative tactic called love bombing. So they, they won't tell you all the details, they'll only bring up the positive things. Yeah, and they'll give you like lots of leeway when you're first involved. And I think my mom was onto that pretty quickly, which is why she kind of never really joined because like, oh, as long as you're going to treat people that way in this position, I'll just stay right there in that position that I don't have to do all the commitments because I see these other people getting treated differently.

10:51

And she was this kind of like by action, a guide to us, without ever saying, like here's how you navigate this world, like just do what she's doing, like don't take it too seriously. Um, which is strange. It's really quite odd. But yeah, I think my parents were also just like quite bad at it because they were learning how to indoctrinate their kids, but like they didn't know they'd ever tried to do that before. They never talked about before this religion, talked about god or spirituality or life, you know, you know afterlife, um, so like, and they were busy.

11:24

I had the five kids for like our whole childhood, so like they were barely able to do it themselves, let alone like take it super seriously. Um, so we got treated with a lot of lenience, I think, compared to anyone else in the religion, and also we had like a really chill congregation and like the leadership of the congregation. It's different in every group of people in every part of the world, yeah, um, and there's like a some roaming person they call a circuit overseer, like an overlord, who takes control of like 10 to 20 different congregations, and he's he's like there to like see how the leadership is handling their group of people that could be like 150 people, depending on the building in the town or whatever, and at one point everyone in this local church congregation were like taken out by that ever-changing person who roams around and making decisions.

12:23

He does like a different church every week, basically in that religion. And anyway he wiped out the leadership and installed all new leaders from different, near, like hour away, different congregations, and those group of guys were like way strict, way more by the book, and they were there to clean up the mess that this you know, according to the corporation that this original group had created, of leniency. So there was a point where it was like whoa, this is not the religion I grew up around what is happening, and they didn't know what to do with me because I was like in a punk band. I didn't have any Jehovah's Witness friends that were my age.

13:00

I was only hanging out with like skateboarders and snowboarders and making music videos and documentary stuff in high school and like causing mayhem and, yeah, like running a TV show with like normal high school kids of all different persuasions Pentecostal, lutheran, catholic, atheists, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It was great, but they were, they were shocked. I was like they're like you can't make a punk rock album and I was like three months later.

13:25

I was like hey, I made it, here is a copy. Enjoy.

13:35 - Sam (Host)

I mean we sort of laugh, but it's also not super fun to not fit the mold right, like in some ways it's hard to be that person who is seen as rebellious or like breaking away in whatever form. That also is often met with resistance and and that sort of thing. So what was that like for you?

13:53 - Scott (Guest)

yeah, there's a lot of social punishments that they hand out, like you're not allowed to hang out people and other. The leaders will encourage everyone else, the congregation, to not spend time with people if they're, if they're breaking the rules or bending the rules or having a brazen attitude or I mean I was self-indoctrinating with like punk rock at the same time and skateboarding culture, which like leans, like real anarchist and yeah and taking that seriously, because I felt like that was the guiding light and that was like that was honest, whereas, like the religion was like always being fake and like trying to sell people immortality.

14:26

All you pay with your soul. You know your whole life as a slave and there's some aspect of like you get these social rewards if you toe the line in the religion and it's very public and they make a scene about it Like they announce you to everyone. They're now doing this responsibility so you can now respect them more, and if you get demoted, they'll also announce that like this person is no longer serving as the literature counter attendant, or this person is no longer, you know, moving the microphones around during our Q&A session. It's like it's still a job, like I don't want to work more.

15:06

I already have to do homework, um, but yeah but then people on the outside, all my like friends in high school in my hometown. They're like who's this guy? Who's like he's like in a cult and he never will go to your birthday. Like he's missing all the important parties and like moments, um. And it's like well, because he's in a cult. And it's like well, so that my real, my normal friends won't accept me because I'm in this weird religion and having I feel like I have to toe a line, to like that identity, cause I like have a gun to my head, cause Jesus will murder me if I don't obey.

15:39

Well in the church. They don't accept me because I'm not obedient enough. I'm like brazenly, you know, going to the after-school hangout to play video games with my friends or I'm having, you know, I'm playing music and with people that are unsavory characters that are slated for eternal genocide and you can't be hanging out people like that. So like I wasn't accepted in the church and I wasn't really accepted in my normal friend groups, I'm like joining shit sucks is what I. I grew up with that mentality. Go independent, because no one will ever belonging doesn't work. It's still affecting me to this day, I think yeah, I think I mean.

16:18 - Sam (Host)

Well, belonging is is just like one of the greatest human needs.

16:23

That often is the reason why we land in these communities in the first place um, and but I think you know you're sort of touching on something that I think a lot of people typically forget about, which is that that isolation doesn't just come once you leave that community or you um break away from that. I what you're explaining is like a double whammy of isolation in both communities. I find that I notice that happens a lot. As someone from the queer community, you didn't really fit in that community as well, but you were sort of like too churchy for the queer community and too queer for the church community, and it was like finding that space is really tricky and it's like you were like too punk for like the, the JWs, but too JW for like the punk community and it was like.

17:16

Yeah, I mean, it's like a double whammy of isolation where you're sort of like straddling this line and you know to go either in either direction. More heavily comes with ramifications of some kind. That's all I mean.

17:31 - Scott (Guest)

That's a lot for like, even like emotional ramifications, but that's a lot for you know anybody, let alone you know the teenager or young person yeah, I think there's like a this human path of you're always constantly like checking where your identity lies and it's not this one moment that you leave a church and you've been transformed by that. You know you're no longer identified with that. Everyone still identifies you with the person who used to be a part of that thing. If they knew you and if you ever mention it, it's like oh, you're one of those people that used to be a part of a thing, like, oh my god yes but at the same time it's like it wasn't just one moment where I'm like I'm not going to do this.

18:09

I've been skeptical since I was six and like I accepted some things and didn't, and less and less over time, and no one would ever know that, because it is see a you know teenager in a suit. That's just represents one thing.

18:22 - Sam (Host)

I'm curious about that skepticism like where, where did that come from and how did you work out so early that like this is all a load of bullshit?

18:33 - Scott (Guest)

reminds me of a very first time I was asked to speak on the stage at church. It was by one of the church elders. He, I shared the I placed the most fantasy sci-fi book, placed as a cult term, placed literature, with somebody Like I got them to accept it. They probably threw it away immediately. It was my biology teacher and I was like so we're learning all this stuff about evolution and I and I did the right thing.

18:59

I told them that that was complete nonsense and then, instead of giving them, trying to give them the book, that's like persuading someone who believes in evolution. You know that creation is what the true answer and all the millions of scientists for 160 years are are all duped by satan. Um, I gave him the revelation book, which is like the jehovah's witness, absurdist, like it's like 20 times more text. They'll put a verse of the bible from revelation, some excerpt of a sentence or two, and then like one or two or three pages about that thing and like there's this interpretation with like crazy graphics and art, um, about the end of the world, basically, and like weird esoteric abstract stuff, um, locusts and rainbows and dragons and beasts, and like a harlot riding a beast. All this like stuff. It's just in the revelation book, but it's insane, it's like all crazy.

19:50

Yeah, I gave him that book and the elder heard that story and he's like would you like to tell it to the congregation in front of everybody? And my response in front of him and my dad was do you want me to lie? And hit to like a gasp from both of them like what, what, what do you mean? Why would you ask that like? And I was like I don't know, why did I ask that? Because I think everyone's just lying actually all the time, like who cares about any of this.

20:13

It doesn't even make any sense and I was like 12 at that time, 13 something, 13 somewhere in that zone, like ninth grade biology, something like that. So like I feel, like I was always just sort of like you know when someone's authentic or like being true or honest, but I feel like that church or that, that culture of that religion is like let's put on a face all the time and be fake to the point that you embody it and like you embody the, the ultimate you know clone of the perfect church person represented in the magazines that they produced, and I was just like I don't have any time for that. I hate that. So much.

20:53

So I it's just been an ongoing thing and at some point I was like I have I don't ever want to be associated with this group ever again. Like it took me. I was very much on that path. It just took me a really long time because I had pretty lenient parents and, like pretty lenient like upbringing around it that I was like it's not that bad. There are a few people I like and I do want to live forever, so let's just keep on taking the carrot following the carrot around, you know, yeah.

21:21 - Sam (Host)

I'm curious, like how that skepticism impacted your family life though, because like I can't imagine that, like your dad would have been too impressed with, like, with that sort of like not just healthy level of skepticism and curiosity, but a downright like this, this is crap kind of mentality yeah, there's only a few times we really talked about it on a deeper level, um, because on some level I could confide in him and in a way my parents like really held like all a lot of the nonsense at bay from our family.

22:01 - Scott (Guest)

But yeah, I pushed a lot of buttons, I think. You know, I think he would level with me a few times and it's a weird thing about it. He grew up without any religion, so or he maybe he believed in god, but he was. He'd always read national geographic. We like had just like a lifetime subscriptions, we like a bookshelf as long as, like a basement of like every year in order, and he would read all the articles talk about. He would always give me like political news and history and we would watch like all the comedies from the 80s and 90s and, um, they were pretty lenient about rated r movies like the classics are fine, that kind of thing, you know.

22:35

in the world in his life was: 1984

23:08

Whenever they change their, they get. They call it new lights, quote unquote, where something that they used to believe and everyone had to agree with, or you doubt. They no longer believe, or they've altered it because it's like convenient for them, and they never explain why. It's just now, this is what you believe, so you better adapt or like, or else, um and like in orwell, like they would, they'd help one of the guys the main character's job was to get the newspapers and then edit them, and they would reprint the newspaper and then put it back in the archive is like, oh yeah, we never said that, this is what we said yeah they do that, they still do that yeah, yeah, yeah, I think for people who don't know what the watchtower is, can you describe what that is?

23:55 - Sam (Host)

for people who don't really have any context?

23:57 - Scott (Guest)

s movement and that's like an: 1800

25:15

So they were really against that and they were against social media. They've been, and now they have their own website and they've changed their like whole artwork and url. They changed their whole brand and logo into a url jworg, don't go there. It's the dumbest information on the planet. They send everyone there and now they can easily update whenever they want to change their literature and the history of their ideologies. They can just like update the website instead of having to update and then print new books and sell the new books and tell everyone to burn or delete the old books or whatever which they used to do. I got like three copies of the revelation book because they changed their beliefs so many times. We had to keep getting a new book, um, because it was all wrong. The true religion was wrong so many times, um, but yeah, washington prints all the literature and that is their main form of like money making, because all the members eight million is their main form of like money-making, because all the members 8 million ish members who knows what the real number is buy it.

26:10

They it's done donation based, but they buy it and then they have a real estate business it's all underneath this wash tower corporation and now they're starting to do like commercial real estate and they've been selling congregations whenever they need to fund like a a litigation against them that they've lost. You have to fund like a litigation against them that they've lost. You have to pay hush money out to a victim of abuse of some of various kinds, um, so they've been selling. My home congregation got sold like nine to twelve years ago something, and they've everyone. Everyone has to travel like hours to like go to church now, but they needed the money.

26:39

But now they're buying all this real estate in new york and other places to like fund their billion, multi-billion dollar operation one of the richest companies in New York. They're like Scientology in that case, because they're more global yeah, more global and they have more poor people. So they have to like scale the proselytizing to get more poor people to donate money. They get a lot of. They coerce a lot of old members to give all of their estate to them rather than give it to their children as one of their final scams yeah, I mean there is like a significant amount of financial exploitation.

27:16 - Sam (Host)

Um, when, when did you realize all of that? Like when did you start to notice? Were you out by that point that you started to notice all of that?

27:27 - Scott (Guest)

hen I moved to Minneapolis in: 2003

27:56

had made this website back in: 2002

29:10

And so, anyway, she got these flood of letters and ended up having to like quit being a Jehovah's Witness and they made a website. I think she did it all on the sly for a while there because she wanted to leak as an insider and she made this website. So my friend was like shit, did you see this? And it was like, oh, I believe that I've had multiple victims approach me as a safe space because they saw me as enough of a outsider somehow that they could trust me, and I felt you know good about that, I guess, at the time, but I know what to do with that information as a teenager and then, um, but so it's like oh yeah that's believable.

29:43

What are we going to do? But I have no idea. I'm barely in this religion, I don't know how to do it. I'm like she's doing it, she's doing the work and it's like, oh, that's yeah, okay, it's not just my congregation or the neighboring ones that I heard rumors about and you know whispers about from different people. It's actually actually a rampant systemic problem in this particular religion. Yeah, so that was, yeah, still a few years before I actually like finally cut ties. Yeah, so it's kind of an ongoing. Like it's all all this stuff just like stacks up. Someone calls it like an analogy of, like this, the bookshelf behind you like more and more weight on the thing until it finally collapses, but like you're aware of all this stuff, kind of or it's in the back of your mind, like building up, and then it's just like I'm not, this is absurd. Like how many problems do I have to ignore before to to gain, you know, personal salvation? Yeah, this can't be the group that's gonna get it. They're, they're horrible.

30:42 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I mean I'm wondering, like you sort of just said, that, like you're hearing these stories of harm that's being done, and you're hearing them as a teenager, what is what is like teenage Scott do with that? Like, what did you do with that hearing it?

31:06 - Scott (Guest)

like that person can trust it in me, because they need to offload this idea. They need someone else to know. Yeah, but, like I, I don't know that. I don't know the perpetrator. Yeah, um, they may have not. I don't think they've revealed who it was to me at the time. Like they're keeping, they're keeping the identity of that person's secret because that perpetrator the perpetrator knows that this victim is the only one who knows. So if it leaks out any way, then they would know exactly who said it. Right, so they're trying to protect themselves, but they need to tell someone that this is happening and then it's like well, fuck, now I know that that thing's happening yeah, but who?

31:33

is it? It's like a great mystery to figure out. Um, and I think I would just like my big outlet and and I think that's the the subtext of the witness underground film is like all of our outlet was playing music and we weren't particularly singing about. We were not definitely not singing about god or faith or christianity or this religion. It was like secular music, because we needed to like have a break from the topic and sing about relationships or like what's going on in our lives, or like questions, or like abstract ideas, like I was reading books on physics and like trying to figure out the nature of reality, um, you know, totally outside of the religious stuff. So I feel like a lot, of, a lot of my outlets was just making art and not having a real purpose or meaning for it. Like, yeah, I want to be a rock star. You know some some mythical. You know in my head I'm a rock star today.

32:22

I'll play for two hours and like it'll feel better, kind of thing yeah maybe I'll make an album with my friends because I found a cool riff, you know, like it wasn't too deep, to be honest, but it probably was like a coding, like I don't know, I wasn't even like coding language, but like I definitely wasn't singing about that topic, it's like so heavy you need to have a break from it yeah, I mean, I'm even like.

32:45 - Sam (Host)

We know how um constructive, how effective, how helpful creative expression is for, like, regulating our nervous system and processing stuff.

32:56 - Scott (Guest)

So it's super unsurprising to me that, even without lyrics or anything attached to the music, that even just the expression of music would have been a source of comfort and escapism almost for you during that period of time and I feel it just happens to be like the closest thing to the present moment you can get is the act of creating sound waves or other kinds of art, because it, like vibration, is what is at the base of everything in our known reality. So if you're like making vibrations, you're just like playing with, playing with the universe, in a sense yeah just so happens to be, yeah, this profound thing yeah

33:39

I feel like it's the center of everything that humans do, is like music's at the heart of it, or art in general, and I kind of wish society would organize themselves around that, rather than like the growth of capital or like money or yeah, I mean, obviously we need to like there's like transactional stuff is not capitalism, but like I feel like capitalism as like let's get as much as we can for ourselves as like the center of society is like really corrosive, and this is the point, whereas, like art, if you ourselves as like the center of society is like really corrosive, and this is the point, whereas, like art, if you just made that the center of everything, what, what could you do in society?

34:15 - Sam (Host)

yeah, absolutely idealism, yeah fun to think about we've all got a dream right. Um, how old were you when you left the community and you sort of very like created that separation?

34:30 - Scott (Guest)

I made a pretty big separation at 19, but then eventually talked to my dad about it and my grandfather and then my dad and I had like what I now see is like a pretty manipulative situation where I told him how I really felt and what, where I was at and what I wanted, and he kind of disregarded all of it, told me to go talk to the church leaders and that if I would go knocking on doors preaching full-time, he would give me half price rent and I would save like a hundred dollars a month. Like I could have just gotten a full-time job or a part-time job and like not done any of that and actually like maintained, you know, my sense of self identity and sanity. But I took it on as an experiment to only speak to atheists and agnostics, while maintaining the punk band and disregarding any of the social pressures of the church. We like made all these agreements. I was like I don't agree with this. He's like it doesn't matter. I don't agree with this, it doesn't matter. I don't agree with this doesn't matter. I don't believe this. That's not that important. I don't want to listen to these new church leaders. That don't. It's not that important, you don't need them at all, like in fact, forget that the congregation exists. Like we just like we have made a list of compromises.

35:37

And then I was like, so I can live in the music studio, this extra house, this is like this funny, like scenario of my life. I was like, okay, so all of the things I just listed don't matter and all you want me to do is talk to people, but I can decide on who I talk to and I only talk to atheists. What would that look like? So I did that for a few months and like I learned a lot from atheists because I did that actually and and also I talked to people like I did it alone. I didn't do it with like two by two, like knocking on doors, I did it alone mostly.

36:04

So I was was like I was asking people like, do you ever have like a transformative moment, realms that they think are real or they've experienced something about? Because all the jehovah's ministers talk about is how scared they are of the afterlife, how scared they are of angelic or demonic beings or god or jesus, and like it's just a fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. This is the way that you die. This is the way that, yeah, you get corrupted by the evil spirits of the universe. So that was almost. In a way, it was like a healthy experiment. Like I don't trust any of this, I don't believe a lot of it.

36:54

But let me lean in even deeper on my own terms, because I did that for like another eight years oh my goodness, way too long, I don't recommend any of that. That fucked up a lot of my adult life.

37:07

I expected you to say something like I did that for like six months but in those eight years, you know, I did my own band. I joined my hometown band again. We made an album, we toured around, I made my own album with those guys backing myself, recorded that and then I made I invited Joe's witnesses to be my backing band and that was interesting because I didn't know any java's artists really, because I found some and I was like you guys want to play together. And then we did a bunch of like summer graduation parties and stuff. And then I moved to minneapolis and I I was like, oh, a whole city is so refreshing, I can decide who my friends are. I don't have to just deal with like these are the prescribed group of humans, you're allowed to hang out. So I was like, okay, and you know, multi-congregation super city for me. At the time of minneapolis I was like I can choose to hang out with only musicians and holy shit, there's like there's like 500 of them. That's a lot of humans. There's this whole scene and they're playing shows every weekend and they've made like 14 albums and like this is awesome, what's so fun? So I started dabbling with them and partying with them and it was sort of like our college experience analog, if you will, even though, like witnesses aren't allowed to go to college.

38:11

And then I also went to college. I went to camera school, photography and digital media. I used film and digital. It's like a transition. And then I moved to florida for a hot minute and like took pictures of alligators and on a canoe and like went real into the wild. And I moved to ecuador and I learned how to surf by infiltrating jehovah's with the surfers on the beach in ecuador for half a year. Then we lived in seattle and I lived in colorado and then I left the religion and then I traveled for six months with my then girlfriend, who also left the religion, with me. So, like those eight years were like pretty full of like trends. You know good experiences and like really interesting ones. I read a lot of books, went to a lot of punk shows, you said at the beginning of the episode that you moved around a lot.

38:51 - Sam (Host)

You were not kidding, yeah.

38:53 - Scott (Guest)

That's just the beginning, and after those experiences. I like really took that seriously. I'm in my eighth year living abroad.

38:59 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, okay. So like if that eight years was you know great and made wonderful connections, all of that sort of thing, what happened at the end of the eight years for you to go fuck this? I'm out completely.

39:15 - Scott (Guest)

Well, the very specific moment was me sitting. I was speaking Spanish by that point, because I'd lived in Ecuador and then joined a Spanish congregation to keep religion interesting. It's like, well, if I, if it's boring as hell, I might as well be doing the boring stuff in other languages keep my brain working. So I did that and that was interesting. I was in this. So I was in a spanish church congregation in colorado and some guy wasn't a bad guy but he was, you know, coerced to give a speech about homosexuality and he just like went lean hard into like what's going to happen to these people who are sinning, this very specific group in a very specific way of sinning that is like more evil for some reason than any other sin in god's eyes, so how he's going to kill them and why they deserve it. And I was looking around the room like I've had so many gay friends already as a jehovah's witness, which is pretty rare, but there's a lot actually, just like any other part of society, but they're having to keep it all a secret.

40:12

Um, and you know some have confided in me where how they felt about that. And then you know some have left religion for those reasons. And this is like I can't believe, like this is just a hate speech, like, and everyone here is like nodding along like oh my God, I'm in a cult and I had kind of obviously known some of that. But I was just like this is fucked, I have to, I can't handle this and I just like got up and I left and I was like I'm never, ever, entering this building again again. I never did, I never went back to church again because of that. Um yeah, but it was like there's already a lot of other stuff, you know, going on that I had like deconstructed for those eight years I've been. I've been deconstructing since I was six, I think the indoctrination and deconstruction were like constant ebb and flow, to be honest.

41:06

But that was the ultimate final end. And if you watch the movie um the main character, ryan sutter, he describes like his shocking like spiral of like using understanding, logical fallacies and critical thinking, where he like unwound some specific like thread he was pulling on. He unwound it and it like crumbled the house of cards that is their worldview so profoundly and in my, my real like ideological deconstruction wasn't a homophobic um thing. From that one moment, um, that was just like. This is just wrong. This is like not humanist. You know, as a church that like spins a pretty big story about how loving they are, like having an openly hate speech being a part of their dogma forever, um and having it send like that. But my thing was more about like the history that they were also sharing about world, like global history. One of the specific ones in the movie we talked about is the garden of eden and or, sorry, sorry, noah's ark, how, how, there is no evidence at all for that gilgamesh biblical, no, noah's Ark. They're the same story.

42:27 - Sam (Host)

Um, yeah, being like there's no evidence on the planet for that have having happened.

42:32 - Scott (Guest)

The way it is written, yeah, and when it is, when is it is supposed to have happened? It's a completely absurd. There's, no, there's absolutely nothing that proves that anyway. So that was like. The more logical thing is like oh, they're lying straight up and they're forcing us to believe this absurd allegory was this the first?

42:55 - Sam (Host)

was this the first time that you had started using the language of cult?

43:00 - Scott (Guest)

I didn't even start using that language for quite a long time, to be honest, and I think a lot of people go through these stages. Well, I never looked on the internet to find out what the internet said about this religion until, like, I was out of it for like at least eight years yeah so way into my like mid-30s and I was like it's people on the internet talking about this.

43:20

Am I alone here? Like there has to be other people who've left. Obviously I knew there were, but like, did anyone write anything on the internet about it? Holy shit, there's so much since the 80s, like the beginning of the internet was flooded with like, like pointing out, like their lies basically yeah, yeah there's then, like a passing of the torch, of like activism to help people on like unindoctrinate themselves through reading and videos. It's just constantly going, every generation of people.

43:51 - Sam (Host)

I mean, usually at this point I ask people what it was like for them to unravel all of that indoctrination now that they're out, except that you were unraveling it from like the age of six, and so I'm curious what that was like for someone who was not necessarily as heavily wound up and having like a personal intimate faith as well. So what did that look like for you?

44:21 - Scott (Guest)

I think it was about trying to figure out what's real. So I was seeking lots and lots of other sources that were outside of the religion and one of those paths, like I was reading, like I was saying earlier about physics, like supersymmetry, string theory, I think there was one that was going through all the M theory, and then I started reading a friend, a witness friend, he bought me the End of faith by Sam Harris just because, like you hate religion, like you're supposed to as a Jehovah's Witness, you should read this book. That book was really confronting actually, but, like I became like he, actually his way of thinking and presenting information really helped me, um, logically understand a lot of things. And then, once we started opening up the can of worms of the new atheist sam harris being one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse of the new atheist I started reading christopher hitchens god is not great.

45:18

And then richard dawkins, who I actually was pretty upset about all of his presentations in the 80s and 90s because he was fairly vehemently against all religion and I, you know it's like, oh, he's challenging my worldview from this joseph's perspective. I ended up reading him and he has an entire chapter dedicated in god delusion to joseph's about how stupid their book evolutionary creation is. It's awesome, it's so good.

45:41

I highly recommend all joseph's read the god delusion, um, and then I read a bunch of other stuff by him. And then recently, den denon is the other one, I think cameras mispronouncing that. And then, yeah, so that was happening while I was actively like in the music scene in minneapolis and like hanging out with all those artists and we were all trading those books around, and then I was like, well, you know, that's not exactly like, that's more on like, is God real or not? It's not so much confronting the religion and what their teachings are, it's not like I'm reading something from another religion. That felt more wrong, um, but then at some point I was like I mean, it's kind of on the edge of that right like disproving God's existence. It's kind of like a big deal if you're a church particular. But then I was like, well, the church in their magazines are quoting all these authors, they're quoting these astronomers, biologists, astrophysicists and philosophers in their magazines. So like if they.

46:38

Now it was like I'm going to allow myself to read anyone that they are openly quoting.

46:44

I don't want to just take their their half sentence of a quote to prove their point and like leave it there and be like, wow, it's impressive, the astronomers on our side incredible Cause that's kind of what they want you to do. But I was like I'm going to take that one step further and read their entire book that they're that they're taking that one cold quote from. And then I found out like and I would actually ask the leaders giving talks about where they quote these people and I'm like, oh, did you read that book? I would approach them after did you read the book? The person you quoted Like no, I'd read the Watchtower magazine and that's it. I was like, hmm, pretty sure, like what you said is not what the author would have wanted you to understand. Anyway, so I feel like that's the thing that people should do is like give themselves the freedom to do research externally to the system of control that they feel like they can't get out of whatever.

47:42 - Sam (Host)

Like go outside of that and read some other information yeah, I'm curious, aside from, I guess, the the typical sort of deconstructing theology and doctrine and beliefs and things like that that you obviously did Once you were out and you were sort of reflecting back and you now had this language of like I'm not the only person going through this, like I was in a cult. What was it like for you to look back and realize the ways that, despite the healthy level of skepticism just being raised in a high control environment had on your sense of self and your identity and the way that you related to people and all of those things?

48:25 - Scott (Guest)

You're making me think of how my identity, how I shaped my identity, and like how I let cult programming influence my interactions with people. Yeah, that's real embarrassing. I you know they. What they want you to do is they're constantly indoctrinating you in these weekly church sessions with, if you, if someone says this, you can reply with this and that'll get the conversation started. Or if they give you a hook of like oh, they went through a death in the family or they went through a breakup or they moved to a new location, like they're totally vulnerable. You should totally. You know, teaching you basically to be a narcissistic manipulator with their classic tactics and I was doing it and like like, oh, I'm going to try that out, see if that works. It's like basically like by trial and error, but with like a great guide for manipulation, testing manipulation out on, you know, unsuspecting victims who are probably like like that's not what the fuck dude. Like we're at a party right now. Why are you changing the conversation for this? Like I don't care about your stupid religion, you know?

49:27

like in there, whether they said that to me directly or just were thinking it and be like don't invite that guy, he sucks yeah we don't like for for sure that was going on with like untold amounts of human beings.

49:41

But I didn't always do. That is like sometimes if I was feeling particularly self-righteous and was like wanting for some reason to embody that identity at that time, um, whether it's in daylight or at a house party or something Like. I probably didn't do that at the house party very much. I usually enjoyed myself, but it's really strange to be like code switching, identity switching constantly. I don't wish that upon anyone. And it's also like wait, like why are you doing this? You know, looking back, like why did I feel like I needed to ever represent that book publishing company for free after having to work for them as a slave, modern slavery, which is kind of how I'm starting to see what all that is now?

50:29

um, because like they hook you like they're not getting paid. They're a for-profit company getting free labor and they're telling you you have to do it or you're going to get murdered. Like what else is that besides slavery? I'm just pushing their good books and like website clicks.

50:46

You know yeah, absolutely not not a great look and I don't like. I don't like that. I was ever a part of a thing like that, so it's like it is embarrassing, but at the same time, it's like, well, you know, everyone is sort of representing something with some identity. Ideally it's like your own shit, but you're probably, you know, indoctrinated on some level about something you.

51:12 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I talk about, you know, with people on the podcast, but also with my clients and for my own story, is that sometimes the most painful thing to do is look back and realize the ways that you upheld and perpetuated a harmful system as well, and that's a really um, tricky, tricky and painful thing to have to to navigate, even once you are post that community, post church, whatever it is Um, but you know you're right, Like when you think back to it it feels embarrassing that you were ever a part of that, but you know you were a child and you were a teenager and you know there are all of those ways. But I find that it's one of the more painful things that people have to navigate is, oh, like I was a part of that, I upheld that, I perpetuated that as well. I'm curious what impact did finally cutting the cord and leaving have on your relationships with your family and your dad in particular?

52:25 - Scott (Guest)

an ongoing uh string of disconnection that's lasted now 16 years and and those witnesses are really extreme about disconnection.

52:35

They call it well. They have terms for why you can manipulate and mistreat your family, friends and loved ones if they have their own ideas about reality, if they speak up about what they think is true, if they stop going to church and want to tell you why, et cetera. Or if you just break a rule and they let the leaders, just you know, punish you and then they tell everyone why they you know that they punished you, so you have to obey them.

52:59

Ultimately, it's you never talk to them again for the rest of your life and they have a one loophole, which is like for family business, but my family are real extreme, so they still haven't talked to me for 16 years and they probably now say, well, it's because you were making videos about your feelings.

53:15

It's like I wasn't doing that until I was punished by you guys. The reason why it's a cult is because you do shunning, and shunning is like, okay, not never communicating, putting up an emotional and communication wall. Yeah, basically solitary confinement, like we do in prisons, but instead of a room, it's like a virtual room. It's kind of funny to say virtual room. We got a chat room. You're not allowed to be in my space digitally. Yeah, no phone calls, but, but ultimately, though, we don't want you in our lives because we're afraid of you. Is the is the real thing, and the church leaders and the church ideology, the system has convinced them that if they communicate with their son, sibling, grandson, in the case of my family, that they could lose their chance at going to their paradise, which is, they will be murdered by Jesus himself.

54:10 - Sam (Host)

Yeah.

54:10 - Scott (Guest)

If they talk to me, they're totally afraid that I exist and that I'm, that I have things to say about the thing that they believe in. They I think they respect I've been taught. I have confronted a few of my family members like six years ago, and three different ones, including my parents and one sibling all said the reason why they're afraid of me is specifically the topic that if they, if they actually did the research that suggested, which was, hey, read these three paragraphs on wikipedia, I think that's how nature works. Was there like, oh, my god, you can't ever talk about that. Like they're like, if I read those three paragraphs, I know that I'll lose my entire faith. So, like that thing um bothers them.

54:48

And they're like we respect you, like we think you're really smart, but we know that if we listen to you, we'll lose our whole community of friends and we'll be mistreated by the rest of our family. The way we've treated you and we feel like shit about it. I was like, wow, okay, okay, it's a lot, of, a lot of steps that you've thought through of this already. You don't mean your life, it's like that sucks, but it's like I understand that you're holding up this facade and it's really important to you.

55:13 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I mean like I know that a significant portion of listeners and other people that I've had on the podcast have experienced some form of shunning or excommunication or something like that. How do you personally cope with that?

55:37 - Scott (Guest)

Well, I can't change it. I've realized that it takes two people to have a relationship. So wanting a relationship with someone who specifically doesn't want one, it won't work. So, like you're just, it's just like leaving yourself up for disappointment if you want it, like an expectation that's at a high level, like you'll never get there because the other person won't participate, um. So it's sad because it's sort of like I went through the stages of mourning, grief, um, to those relationships that don't exist anymore.

56:07

I'm glad that they did exist at some point in the past. I can like find the good in that, um, but at the same time it's like it's almost worse than death because they're choosing it, continuously choosing it. I'm not choosing it, I'm just living my life. Just they're choosing to not be in it on purpose and they keep on making the decision and that sucks like almost more. Like death is like impersonal, it just happened and you have to deal with the results of that finality and they're like no, no, I don't want you in my life today either. Fuck you is a really shitty thing. Like they plan family reunions that I see because they post on social media openly. Like our entire family got together and I've never been invited to one of those yeah and like there.

56:53

But there were years where I was up until a point and then they're like we don't, we ignore that that person's real.

57:00

So like that's really shitty to see yeah um, and to the point that, like in the movie we make a pretty big point about, they're so fucked up and evil about it that, like, even when it comes to the loophole that their church makes like official family business includes actual financial business or relationship stuff or death or marriages, and they have made sure that I'm not included in any of those things to the point that none of them would respond to my message with. I heard from some random stranger on the internet that our grandmothers died. Can you please confirm whether or not that's true, like a yes or no question. No response from a single one of those people in my family. I wrote to all of them. I had to find out from some. A second person who I didn't know existed on the internet also wrote me like to say their condolences or whatever. That was like a few weeks ago, so it's pretty raw Like the movie talks about that a lot through another person's story about how horrible they mistreat people even in such a solemn and like a coming together type of occasion as a death in the family.

58:04

They will use that opportunity to like basically throw mud in the face of anyone who, like thinks that they deserve to know that it happened or deserves to be able to go to the wake or the funeral or to mourn without their bullshit layered on top of it. They can't help themselves but like be angry that someone who disagrees with their beliefs about life and the afterlife, or religion or god could even exist in their presence.

58:31 - Sam (Host)

Like they're so like they're despicable yeah, and it's this really fucked up reverse notion where you're not actually doing anything wrong. They're the ones doing all of the wrong things and doing, like, all of the mistreatment and the harm, but you're the one that is supposedly in the wrong. I feel like I've heard you talk, maybe on another podcast, about wanting to go to a sibling's wedding and not being allowed and and that sort of thing. And yet, um, like you're just wanting to peacefully show up, celebrate an event for someone, um, but you're made out to be the villain. You're made out to be the bad guy in the story, but you're not actually perpetuating any harm. And's like this weird.

59:16 - Scott (Guest)

I mean, it's obviously very strategic, but it's also weird and awful notion where um, like the villain is not actually the villain at all yeah, I'm just like the long lost brother who's trying to show up for his family despite their hatred yeah and ultimately, like they, I've had a couple people like one person actually one person, no, no, two people two members of my family, one through marriage and one through blood write me privately to say that I'm starting a hate group against Jehovah's Witnesses and I'm like I'm making a piece of art that, very balanced, talks about how I have been put into their hate group and how they have been actively doing hatred towards me specifically. But like it's not me, it's like millions of people are going through this from this one specific reason or religion and it's not the only religion like this but like they're specifically trying to do darvo, which is deny, accuse and then reverse victim, offensive, offender roles and so like. Somehow I'm creating a hate group, I'm the one being mistreated by them, but they're so wrapped up in the twisted like rationalizations that they've been taught are the way to think about things, because they were told how to do it by their leaders, like they're the bad guys, like treat them poorly. Um, we're, you know, persecution complex. That's what's going on. They have a persecution problem. Somehow my existence, my very existence, or any words that I might say, are attack on their you know their fragile view of reality and they're so afraid of of me poking the pin into the balloon and having it explode that they have to then do horrible things to make sure I can't get the pin anywhere near their balloon.

:: 01:02

Which is just like have you read wikipedia on that topic? Like you're, you're just reading all this like self-reinforcing information. It's not research, and like that's too much, like, oh my god, I did. What is it called a confirmation bias? I try to figure out if the thing that my religion teaches is true by typing in exactly the way they said it into the internet and I found out that religion's rights. Like. That's not research. Try to find out what the opposition says about the idea, like any other different way of seeing it yeah, absolutely.

:: 01:31

I mean okay. So like you have this perspective where you are supposedly this person with immense power which go you right To create this like you know, hate group against a whole denomination and religion. And yet you make the movie anyway. Anyway, you do the documentary, knowing that it's going to cause more fallout with family and with other people. Why do it? Why was it so important to you?

:: 02:04

well after spending eight years being treated that way and and I guess I guess the thing is like I didn't make the movie to like get back at my family. I wanted to. Wanted to make the movie because so many people have been mistreated this way, but I've never seen a movie told from someone who went through it. Almost all the movies are looking in from the outside doing this thing. That's really disgusting to me. Actually, I think it's really manipulative and unfortunate that outsiders making movies about the topic often just point a a finger, like this religion. They're so strange and weird. Look at them. Let's take a closer look at how strange and weird they are. And here are some victims who got out and look how strange and weird and now traumatized they are. You, oh, we feel pity for you sensationalist approach.

:: 02:50

Right, it's really gross like I don't. I, yeah, yeah, I went through some of that, and so did all these other people that I know that also left the religion. They have like a 30 retention rate. It's like the lowest on earth.

:: 03:02

There's a ton of millions of people have left this religion and suffer the same thing, and it's like getting out isn't the end of the problem. It's the beginning of the shunning which then lasts for the rest of your life. So it's like constantly being reminded that this thing happens. So, yes, they're not wrong to roll credits with the person crying, but there's a life after. It's like all these incredible opportunities are now possible because you're no longer tethered to this ugly system of control and coercion. You can now do anything you want. It's incredible amount of freedom and most of the people that I've met who've left religion not all, but quite a lot have gone and done incredible things with their lives, so quite profoundly like successful or ambitious or, um, inspiring the things that they've done, because they don't have anything holding them back. There are no limitations anymore and I think that's beautiful and I want to show that because I feel that I've done things I'm very proud of after that.

:: 03:57

But making the movie was really to share this story in this new, positive lens, saying don't see people who got out of a cult as a sad, pitiful victim. See the people that are in the cult as the victim who have not yet had the chance or the opportunity to learn how to unwind the control. Look at the victim who have not yet had the chance or the opportunity to learn how to unwind the control. Look at the people who left religion as people who successfully navigated cult by control, as a leader in society, because they can see through the bullshit of, like, all these different layers. Like, once you get out of it, it's like, yeah, the onion layer one, one layer peels back with it. You're now, you're in america.

:: 04:31

It's its own insane place with its own control systems and manipulation and propaganda that are quite similar, to be honest. And it's like, oh well, these systems exist literally everywhere, with people vying for power. Like being able to see that is a special skill set that a lot of people just don't have. There's like, accept it because that's normal, quote unquote. But when you've gone through something so extreme and like, figured it out and then gotten out and then, like, made a whole new life, you can see through the bullshit, and I would appreciate if people like take a look at people who've gone through this.

:: 05:00

Yeah, are they traumatized? Sure, but like they've also transcended a lot of things that most people never have to go through, and maybe we could use people that can understand, you know, in america for it's a great example right now what's going on. There's always something going on, but right now it's really insane. Um, yeah, that like maybe this problem exists in your life too, and it was people that you love also, and that you might have some disconnection through your family members and friends and community because of someone being manipulated by propaganda or in some way.

:: 05:33

I think that idea of there is life after was one of the few reasons why I started this podcast, which was that like, yes, I wanted people to not feel like they were the only people going through whatever experience they were going through, that there was always going to be one or you know a hundred other people going through it alongside of them. But I also wanted people to be able to hear that you know, there is, there is good still, that there is life still and that there is healing and hope and wholeness still. Um, and yeah, that might come through a shit ton of work, but it's still possible and it's still there. Still is the ability for that after leaving whatever group you have left. Um, which leads me to one of my favorite questions, to ask that I ask most people which is present day? What brings you joy and peace?

:: 06:38

day. What brings you joy and peace. Well, I found that I do really enjoy working on inventions. That's one thing. So I do electrical engineering design that took a side path during the last economic recession, went back to school and I've worked on some pretty neuroscience, pretty cool neuroscience projects, pushing tech to its furthest levels with, you know, latest physics. That's been really cool. Um, and some rocket design and spacecraft things, innovations, and I like that. But then, on a more personal level, what I always come back to is filmmaking. I started doing that as a teenager in high school with our documentary project program and I went to school again with that and this film. I had a. It's got a.

:: 07:14

I used to play music so like I got back into music, went into Vietnam for five years we didn't even talk about that made a movie there. After five years of like focused work in documentary and music, music videos, I made a film called Hanoi Mixtape and that was sort of like I'm just having fun, I'm like making, I'm co-creating with all these other artists and I'm enjoying it for the sake of doing it. But also there's this beautiful thing that happens out of it, like now there's a documentary that like capsulates a community in a time and it doesn't exist anymore, like there's a lot of people moved out of the country and this band doesn't exist and people have kids, etc. Life goes on and I made this thing with with Witness Underground. That was like a deep look into this really important topic to me. And now I'm living in an art collective. That movie brought me to New Zealand to show the international premiere and I've been living in this art collective being introduced to some of the top artists in the region and each one of them I'm asking because I don't want to rush into another documentary. I definitely don't want to make another film alone. I'm looking for a team of people, but it's definitely a slow process. But I find myself shooting um and playing with visual arts again and that's when I know when I'm doing that, I know I'm like in the right spot kind of thing, because I'm like enjoying the process and um.

:: 08:26

Anyway, I've been asking these artists like what's the story worth telling? And usually, since they're artists, I'm like what's the story we're telling when it comes to music and art in new zealand? Because I'm in new zealand at the moment and they've been giving me really great ideas that I would never have known if I just looked at it from the outside. So it's like deep, like kings of the underground been going at it for 15, 20 years and like they're so embedded and they know everybody and like what's the story we're telling they? They know what a story we're telling is and that, like having an outsider tell it isn't could be important, rather than like a self you know marketing thing, like it always feels a bit gross.

:: 09:03

Um, so like to have someone outside be like oh, I recognize that that's that's legit cool. Like let's talk about making it, we can interview you, you don't have to do self-promotion. Let's get a team behind this, get some funding behind it from the arts department. Like I'm like exploring these new ideas I have like six different ones that we're kind of like I'm making poster art for and like putting together like a funding package. Like it feels good to like represent the thing I said I want at the beginning, which is like have art at the center of society. I feel like that's important. But what don't just say like, oh, look at what this artist did with their life. It's like so how does like, for example, how does like neurodivergence and electronic music? How, what is the base of that. Let's get some experts in on this. Like maybe a lot of artists are neurodivergent and maybe they're.

:: 09:45

We need them to be the guidance for our society, the mirror to society yeah and so, like having these higher level, deeper conversations with some of the top artists has been really cool, and so I think I might develop, you know, one or more of those, but try to give them all the best life they can have and pitch them all and see what ones shake out of funding and produce the movies for fun.

:: 10:09

But it's like it also feels good, you know, to make something important. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and and okay. So I have two more questions. The first question is where is your sense of spirituality and belief and religion now?

:: 10:26

it's been changing a lot lately. So when I left the religion, like that day I was telling you when I walked out, never went back, I was like, ah fuck, I'm an atheist, like always call them. This is really embarrassing.

:: 10:40

I can't believe I got here like I woke up to that, but I was like I know the path I took to get here, but holy shit, um, so being an atheist was like oh, it's a bit of an adjustment. I had to read a bunch of books like what does that even mean exactly? Like wait, I need to learn about, like the history of what everyone else has been saying for hundreds of years about you know the real course of history for, like, life on the planet and the origin of it? Um, and it was really nice to have atheism. Like materialist atheism, like only what can be studied is real. Let's materialist atheism, like only what can be studied is real. Let's stay there for a while. All spiritual conversations, gods, deities, angels, demons, um, afterlife, past lives, all that's complete bullshit. Like that's where I needed to be. And then it's like, okay, things that actually affect my life or seem worth exploring, I'm gonna add those in on a case-by-case basis. And now I'm, you know, 16 years later.

:: 11:35

From the day I walked out of that church to now, I've definitely I've had a lot of psychedelic experiences that were pretty profound. It sort of went from like okay, consciousness can't be explained by literally any science, but we're all experiencing it, and we're probably not the only ones. And then, like mushrooms were basically like showing me like everything that's alive is for sure conscious, maybe to different degrees or something, but like I don't know, but like I feel so connected. So that was like a start. And then I'd hear, I listened to, like Duncan Trussell, the comedian. You know this guy, he's like the most abstract human, he's such a funny person, but he's always like bringing up esoteric topics in a way that's like really fun and playful and insane. I mean he did Midnight Gospel with Netflix to give some context. But he said something recently, like a few years ago probably, but it was like the rocks are conscious. Like the rocks are conscious. Come on, like the whole universe is made out of like void or rocks, like there. You think that's conscious, that's insane. But then I've since had more experiences. I'm like, well, if we're really made out of dust and like all the material that makes up our body is made out of stuff that used to be a mountain mixed with water, then basically our ancestors are mountains, like, if our ancestors are mountains, then fuck, maybe, maybe they are conscious. We should talk to the mountain. For sure, the trees are conscious. I'm definitely going to talk to them.

:: 13:11

Yeah, yeah, so like I've definitely like taken a ride with what's real, um, yeah, and I feel like everything's ultimately interconnected, like the space between you and me is still stuff and molecules and electrons, and at the base of every atom is still vibrations, and like, yeah, they're all interacting and bumping into each other and we're like transmitting audio, sound waves through a digital device, you know crossing. Like it's insane what all of this is and it's all interconnected. So I feel like what is my spirituality now? It's well, I think a lot of things are well. Maybe everything anyone's ever thought might be real is probably real in some sense. Um, when it comes to the esoteric and unexplainable and consciousness, yeah I believe telepathy is possible.

:: 14:05

I've experienced this. It's very strange. I've done. I've had a experience where I was remote. Viewing something in real time that was profound to me Made me question my reality a little bit. If space isn't real, you can actually be somewhere else. Your consciousness can be somewhere else and detached from your body. Then did I go through? Is there an Einstein-Rosen bridge to that place, like a portal, Anyway? So I think about all this stuff constantly and it's like there are no answers.

:: 14:40

I don't I can't be conclusively like sure about anything, which I think is why it's more probable that that's real, because the thing I had to do as a Jehovah's Witness and I hear Mormons always doing is like I know it's true, my confidence is the thing that you should understand is true and therefore God's real, my God's real. This book is it's. I know it's real. It's like that's the fact that you're so overly confident. That was me, that was probably complete bullshit. You should have to sell it that hard.

:: 15:04

Yeah, absolutely. I think if you're far more focused on the answer than the question, we've got an an issue. Yeah, yeah, um, okay, I I finish all of my episodes by um wanting to give some encouragement, I guess, to listeners. So I am going to twist it a little bit in terms of what would you say to someone who has just left the Jehovah's witness community? What would you say to them? They have no idea what they're doing, they've just left, been kicked out, whatever that situation is, but what would you say to them?

:: 15:40

The hack that I've heard so many people say that worked really well for them is you've just been punished and you'll be continuously punished and reminded of who's punishing you if you stay in the same place so you can reverse the feeling of having your rug pulled up from underneath you with loss of innocence, family connection, church faith, god, by just relocating to like the next town over or the next city or state or country Might as well go wild if you're changing location and go to the most crazy place you can imagine and then rebuild yourself there and the people are awesome everywhere.

:: 16:17

Like you've been taught to be afraid of people everywhere outside of your community, but people are literally awesome everywhere and hospitable and kind and curious, so you can actually make a life literally anywhere, and none of it will be easy, but it'll all be like if a vastly improved situation then staying in your local area really, really where you'll be reminded of all of the difficult things that you've grown up with and the past, and also those people knocking on your door trying to manipulate you or trying to get you to come back. To use their horrible language, like, don't go back, don't don't like crawl back and be punished and get sucked back into their gross situation of manipulation yeah forge your own life by changing your location and do something that actually drives you and your curiosity I love that.

:: 17:08

I mean relocating, I think, is one of the greatest forms of agency, so I love, I think it's a great idea. It's also probably the most practical piece of encouragement and advice that anybody has given on this podcast, so I love that also. Thank you for joining me. It's been a pleasure.

:: 17:26

It's been a pleasure for me too. I hope somebody got something out of that.

:: 17:30

I'm sure they did. It was great. Thanks, scott. Thank you, sam. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you. Remember, no matter where you are in your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and keep moving forward. Take care.