Cold Open: The NXIVM Sex Cult! Founded by Keith “Creepy Ass Super Punchable Face” Raniere [ruh near ee] in 1998 - at its height, this NXIVM had NOTHING to do with acid reflux medication and counted thousands of members, including celebrities, heirs and heiresses who all paid thousands, and sometimes MILLIONS of dollars to attend a never-ending series of classes at various NVIXM training centers. Lying at the intersection of a multi-level marketing scheme, a self-help group, and occasionally a summer camp, NXIVM was a true cult. For a few die hards… it kind of still is. People started publicly worrying about how dangerous this cult might be all the way back in 2003. But it wouldn’t be until 2017, when the New York Times published an article about one of its former members being literally BRANDED like cattle as a part of an initiation into a secret sex cult within NXIVM, that the group’s true and terrible practices would be brought into the light and exposed. We’ll meet some people - seemingly ordinary people - that so desperately wanted someone to lead them to enlightenment that they allowed themselves to be slowly manipulated into paying to participate in weirder and weirder “exercises” until they finally agreed to be actual slaves. And part of, basically, a harem. We’ll meet Keith Raniere [ruh near ee], the devious and perverted mastermind at the center of all of this, who used his experience at Amway - a Michigan-based multi-level marketing company - and then borrowed a lot from Scientology, to make people think that he was some kind of once-in-a-lifetime guru spiritual Jedi who had the answer to all of your - and all of the WORLD’S - problems. But he wasn’t - ISN’T - a guro. He didn’t have any answers. Not really. Keith Raniere [ruh near ee] is just a man. A really selfish, sick, and bad man who convinced people that doing what he wanted - even if what he wanted was to sexually exploit and degrade them - was the only way for them to lead an ethical, enlightened life. And now he’s in prison, about to be sentenced, possibly for the rest of his life. How did Keith manage to keep NXIVM going for almost twenty years? Who the Hell is this guy? How do NXIVM and other multi-level marketing schemes keep manipulating people and taking their money? What psychological processes lead to people getting into and then staying in a cult? All of this, and more, on another CULT! CULT! CULT! edition of Timesuck. PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I.Welcome! A.Happy Monday: Happy Monday you beautiful bastards! Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, Praise Bojangles, and sing to me Triple M - I had one helluva week! I’m Dan Cummins, the Master Sucker, Covid Slayer, and you are listening to Timesuck. This past week for me and the crew here at Bad Magic Productions was ALL about Covid-19. I tested positive and was sick for a week, then the Queen of the Suck Lynze tested positive and is STILL sick - in bed right now - and Logan and Kate Keith tested positive and are ALSO still sick - Zaq the Scriptkeeper has been staying home out of the office away from us virus carriers, and Reverend Doctor Joe P already had it. And we’ve been safe around him to minimize the very small possibility that he could theoretically get it again. Pretty sure my daughter Monroe has it, she tested negative but has since started showing symptoms, and I think my son Kyler has so far dodged it. And I AM EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that NONE of us have ended up in the hospital. We all skipped suffering from any severe and scary respiratory symptoms. For me - it was mostly about a week of the worst body aches I’ve ever had. And so many trips to the bathroom. I’m pretty sure I about McGill popped off my butthole a few times. Super fun. All that toilet paper we stocked up on months ago ended up coming in handy. So glad it’s behind me now. Thanks for the well wishes - I hope you all, if you do get it, don’t get it any worse than I had it. Covid has been spiking here in Couer d’Alene and the hospitals are currently at basically max capacity. Hope that changes soon so everyone who needs medical treatment can get it. FUCKNG 2020! B.Merch: AWESOME new LAW OFFICE OF KEMPER, JOACHIM, AND KROLL SHRUB SLUT tee in the store at Bad Magic Merch dot com. Very much a Better Call Saul Vibe. Check it out ! It cracks me up so much. C.Additional Announcements: Also - Happy Halloween to everyone! Don’t feel like much trick or treating is gonna happen but you can always dress up at home and just eat your own candy I guess. I know the NXIVM Cult isn’t necessarily a spooky topic - creepy for sure, not necessarily spooky - but guess what - I have another podcast with NOTHING but spooky topics now. If you want some late October chills - check out Scared to Death! Almost sixty episodes now and literally hundreds of paranormal horror stories have now been told. Become a Creep or a Peeper if you haven’t done so already. D.Segue to Topic: Okay. Let’s get to culting. Let’s learn about a cult that hung around for roughly twenty years - a cult that is still technically, just barely, alive. Let’s get to the bottom of NXIVM’s pyramid of fuckery. CULT! CULT! CULT! PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE II.Intro/Establish Premiss: Though we’ve covered lots of cults on Timesuck, we’ve yet to cover a cult quite like NXIVM. The closest we’ve probably gotten is Scientology, which only makes sense because NXIVM’s founder, Keith Raniere [ruh near ee], borrowed some terminology and concepts from Scientology when he was engineering his new cult. Like Scientology, NXIVM posed as an organization providing a path to personal empowerment, an organization that included notable celebrities who made huge donations to the cause. I say “posed” - past tense - because, while there are still followers, you can’t really become a new follower because the MLM the cult is based is no longer open for business and its leaders are either in jail or waiting to go to jail. Hard to put on empowerment retreats when you’re behind bars. Like Scientology, NXIVM wasn’t based in any existing religion. It’s the rare Western cult that didn’t spring forth in some way from a form of Christianity. Unlike Scientology, NXIVM was never able to become classified as a religion. On the surface - it was corporate. Executive leadership seminars. It wasn’t REALLY that. But that’s what it was supposed to be. Leadership training. Had it been given more time to grow, maybe it would have morphed into a full blown religion. It was certainly evolving in that direction. The NXIVM cult blended elements of self-help programs, women’s and men’s groups, corporate leadership seminars, and summer camps. But the thing that Keith borrowed the most from was multi-level marketing, a marketing strategy that actually has a lot of crossover with cult tactics. And, within this web of fuckery, a secret group within a group called DOS formed that offered to help women achieve their own empowerment goals by agreeing to become slaves to a female master - a female master who would demand that they have sex with their master - “Vanguard” aka Keith Keith Raniere [ruh near ee]. Weird way to become empowered. This whole story is SO fucking weird. Some of these women even agreed to get branded. Like human cattle. They rationalized it as just another “exercise” - an expression of loyalty, an “empowerment” exercise - like many of NVIXM’s other strange exercises. These assholes sold people on “empowerment” by getting them to do just the opposite - by getting them to subjugate themselves to another’s will. Pretty amazing mindfuck to pull off. The only thing NVIXM ever had to do with empowerment was just saying the word over and over. Today, in order to better understand the world the NVIXM cult was born from, we’ll go over how multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes work, including some of the most famous schemes of all time. THEN, we’ll dive into NVIXM specifically, following the life and times of its supposedly-one-of-a-kind-genius, really more of a typical-master-of-lies leader, Keith Raniere [ruh near ee] right up to and then through the arrest of many of NXIVM’s leadership in 2018 for a variety of charges, including sex trafficking and child pornography. And, as I record this, the group still lives on, with Keith Raniere [ruh near ee] leading a few devoted just-can’t-let-go followers from prison. I find it especially interesting how FRESH all of this is. Most of the cults we cover here existed long enough ago for us to possibly feel like, “Wow - can’t believe what we Meatsacks USED to fall for! Thank God we’re smarter than that now!” Don’t get to do that today. People are still falling for this shit! Right NOW. Odds are there other cults operating at this very moment that will soon be brought down or at least exposed and we’ll be covering them in future episodes. What’s especially troubling about today’s cult is how successful its members were and/or are.