The Vanity Fair Takedown

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How comees. point three percent, APy as of january thirtieth, twenty six is representative variable and earned onunds swept to programing. point six five percent newient boost for three months and up to one hundred fifty thousand dollars. Direct deposit one thousand dollars month fund an invest account for a point fivecent incase Cash account offered by Wealthfront broerage LLC member for F IPC not a We had a system of punishment that we would call the hot seed And the group like mob, you know, comes at you and it's like it's like hurling stones I remember this one guy They found a candy bar in his pocket, you know, and it's like you would have thought he'd shot somebody the way he was treated Welcome to the second episode of the second season of Was I In a cult? I'm your host, Tyler Meom, and I'm Tyler's Ppmaster, Liz I Czzy. Now, if you didn't listen to the first part of this story yet, and we admire your unconventionality. But in order to understand this episode better, we suggest starting with episode one, where we introduce our guest, mister Hoyt Richard And you will learn all about how ridiculously good looking he is. But we will make no mention of that in this episode. I mean, we'll try not to, but it's just so damn hardor So to recap, our fearless, devilishly a handless He less of five seconds I'll do it. So at this point, Po, our super mododel had just started modeling, but he wasn't quite super graduated from Princeton and moved to New York and was living back with self proclaimed socialite Freddie The book Aliens Among Us had come out, touting Freddy as the next philosopher that could revolutionize humanity. And the group that was now formed had just given itself a name Eternal values. And a cult was born. I took you just a wid baby cult. wid baby cult. You's a good little cultty. justust a good little cultie. You love b me. Can you say coercion? Oh, yes you can Of course, at this point it was just a little baby cult and nobody knew that it was a full blown cult yet people had read aliens ammong U us and were now reaching out to Freddie from all over the world So to keep up with the incoming interest, they set up an office. We don't even have an office The time I spent in New York was really only five years A lot happened in those five years Once we started to kind of get involved with, you know, the business, that's when things got much more into How are we going to make an imprint on a bigger scale So The good times of whether it was going clubbing or those all kind of went out the window and now it's like full time work mode And the job duties were numerous. They would take phone orders and sell new age books. O they would record their own take on spirituality and sell those tapes. Of course, Freddie, like most co leaders, wasn't doing much well, any of the work It was his job to do these life readings and he was a terrible procrastinator and putting it all off. And you know, the book had given him this kind of celebrity status But Hoyt was a budding supermodel. And supermodels get to travel the world I traveled a lot. I mean, I was on the road three hundred days a year for like ten years and rolling, you know, easily So I was gone a lot, but When I would be home, I hadd to go straight to the office. I was answering letters from people who were really seeking help and supposed to give advice to, which I never felt very comfortable doing Supermodel by day, emerging lightworer by night. And all of the outside attention the group was getting led to many more followers More people moved into the building then More people are getting involved We had originally two apartments in the building. I think we had like upwards of eight or nine at that point. Of which Freddie would have called them chambers of the pyramid. We'd have our painters come and repaint the place so it's in line with the whole Eeternal values vibe. Which, if you were wondering, was in new age colors of quote, high vibrational harmonics, whichich, if you were wondering, is shades of pink, lavender, turquoise, and Chartreuse. All accented by carefully painted Silvery clouds, You know, colors of the newew age acccording to Fredd and my grandmother's house robes We had up in the Bronx, this area called the Lft where you could house up of twenty people I mean, was there was a guy up there called Christopher Pratt very specialized high end painter. It was basically his role to take the new recruits who would come in and not really have the means to sustain apartment in New York They would go to be sent up to the loft and they would go work for Christopher and he would kind of train them and they would go and paint houses and like celebrities' homes And then the rest of the people who were more kind of, I would say the frontliners, the branding people were successful, you would get them to move from where they were in the city to move into the building and, uh And then we'd all meet for dinner every night, you know? And when I'd be in town, I'd sometimes be responsible to cook for thirty, thirty five people We had a very strict diet. We definitely we called it the diet. We actually ended up printing it out and marketing it as well. So kind of fruits and vegetables, meats and fish. It was actually pretty solid Diet, people were getting pretty strong and healthy on it And we'd all eat together and That's kind of the routine that we go back and work in the office and you know, sleep was not considered something that you were ed to do? Like you had to get your work done Most of those involved in those early days were attractive, well dressed, twenty and thirty something year olds. Fashion was important to Freddie. spepecifically gemstones Frederick would stress the importance of the gemstone being worn next to the skin callalling them the shocker centers of the earth. Or as Freddie called them directly, the condensed light of God's own thoughts. I was gonna say that Freddy would of course sell gemstones to his followers and others Thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. It's been speculated that he sold over two million dollars worth of gemstones over the years of the group Which seems like an appropriate time to bring up our W I inna Cult Gemstones. That's right. Was Ina Cult Gemstones, operators are standing by Wear them in your underwear only to receive the full benefit. But in addition to gemstones and jeans, the Eetternal Values group did have a unifying appearance And that was in the late seventies early aies with the advent of all the tanny salons So Everyone in the group was so tanned because you know, that was kind of status quo. I mean, it's like part of our uniform. We were just We eventually ended up buying one of those machines and using it like it put it on top of one person's bed and it just Everybody was so tan all the time Tan, handsome, skinny and professional, the hip nineteen eighties New York New Age commune. it was architects, lawyers Other models, there was a accountant, you know, things like that. So people had had other jobs We were all kind of living in the same building So it was a little bit more communal that way, but it was understood that not everyone could give up their job The women got treated badly in our group. I mean, there was a whole misogynistic vibe that Freddy had created I don't know why he lookook down on women. I mean it's impossible to get inside his brain, but He was just against almost heterfxuality in general. There is always a hierarchy in cults. I guess I would have been clean in toilets then If you were a heterxual woman, you were you were at the bottom of the food chain and he made you feel like that. and he would actually Tell them like your job is to bring in, you recruit people. you seduce them and bring them in here. Yeah And that was kind of the narrative that he was creating for them, which was awful Freddie naturally took the leadership position He would definitely present himself as a teacher and he was looking for his students. He would call them the child Dans, the deans In Aliens ammong us, he claimed he was eager to reach as many quote wholesome people as possible prepare them for the new age that will be dawning soon in guess what year? Y two K baby. That's right. the year two thousand. My God, so many terrible things were supposed to happen that year. But the only thing to actually go extinct that year was the Pirranian Ibes. When a falling tree landed on the final surviving member of the species. It's true. So sad. pooor little wild goat In a cultic environment, you're targeting the people that will bring in more people So you're looking for people that have like inherent leadership qualities, you know, have a certain level of charisma have a background of success. Um, you know, that's a very appealing thing because it's all it's like marketing You know, if you're going to put people in the front lines out there to kind of set an image, you want them to reflect the image you think that would, you know will bring more people in And Waltst hanging out in Milan, Cad in Gucci and Versace with other fabulous people. Versace Versace Versace. Hoyoy did his share of recruiting as well Definitely unconsciously with a recruiter, for sure. I just thought I was doing every on a solid A lot of models aret you know trying to spiritual path of a different source and we'd have all sorts of conversations and I might you offer up an opportunity to say, Oh, you should come meet you I did recruit him quite a few people and that's Another thing that's not fun to live with, but I can't say at the time I thought I was trying to, you know, do them some benefit. But the group would also recruit right at home We held seminars in a church in New York City, just trying to find different ways that we could get the word out to people and potentially recruit in some new members It's a warm audience, right? And they're coming there because they're interested in the subject matter. And then Freddy we would go on this radio show sometimes and sometimes people call in and sometimes those people would get involved. at this cable access show. Oh my God. You have to see it to believe it And see it we have. Hite gave me a dry full of these clips and I watched way, way, way too much of this terrible cable access show We would come on like at two thirty in the morning right after the Robin Bird show and Robin Byd was a adult movie star, you know, who wouldt interview other adult movie stars And so you'd have all these porn stars on for an hour. and then eternal values would come on like,, this one have newew wge music How do to you do, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Frederick von Merz with another platform across America of the Eternal Values. This platform will deal, touch upon the towering intellects and geniuses. who presented What became Western philosophy Plato, Socrates, can't take card and others It would be mostly Frederick and John riffing about different metaphysical topics. Nothing was planned, just riffing A universal dispensation The kind of which that is taking place on our planet in this day and age, is bringing together a focal point where we realize that the material world, as we thought existed from a subject object point of view, we realize no longer exists for actually what all we were ever experiencing from a material point of view All you are experiencing this moment Are the vibrations of light bouncing off the atoms of your television set. And on that show, Freddy would often spout off about his theory called a walk in. We touched on walk ins in episode one, but it definitely warrs more description Freddy's whole take on his life was, I don't know if you're familiar with a walk in. Have you heard of that concept? I don't know Maybe tell me a walk in is If a person's struggling in their life that are looking at them from like a soul level. like a soul iss in a body having a terrible time. They're contemplating suicide In that scenario, they can, in essence, be pulled out of their body and given liberty without killing the body, a new soul will come in. They'll take on that person's karma But because they're an evolved soul, they'll actually be able to not only take on that coma, but also do the work that they want to do to kind of jump past catapult past childhood and all those childbearing years and get right in action So the idea is the person kind of has a little bit of a breakdown and they emerge like a brand new person It clearly defines historical walk ins. For instance, Benjamin Franklin Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln were all walk ins. Bohondas K Gandhi, Jesus of Nazareth became the Christ's consciousness walked into Jesus' body when he was baptized by John the Baptist. We're all walk ins And do you know who else was a walk in? Let me guess Freddie so the way Freddie would reference that is Oh, the old Fredick would do this and this, you know, but you know, I'm V the short for von Meers, you know, And so he kind of would reference his prior self with who he really was and that he was not that prior person. He claimed he could look at the astrological chart and tell you if you were walking So this is all kind of this nomenclature that came up around the whole N age thing. I think it was Van Halen actually read the book Aliens Among U, got fascinated with the walk in idea and wrote the song, Love Walks in. Oh yes, a music reference and not just a music reference, a good music reference. Hearing this made me happy because I do love M some Van Halen. In fact Eddie and Alex Van Halen grew up just down the street from where I currently live in Pasadena. And I do song. If you haven't heard the song, you should. Here I'll help you. Siri. playlay, loveve walks in Serry Fuck you Sy. Love Walks in is a ballad. It's a love song. But it's also very much a super weird song about aliens. The song is from the nineteen eighty six Van Halen album five thousand one hundred fifty. This was the first album released with Sammy Hagar as the lead singer who replaced David Lee Roth. The songs with Sammy Hagar were a bit softer than the David Lee Roth songs. They were a little more well rounded So the first single from five thousand one hundred fifty was, Why can't this be loveove? Good song. The second was Dreams and the third was Love walks in. And as we just discovered, was inspired by an alleged alien encounter Sammy Hagar has stated numerous times that he has been visited by aliens In an interview with Guitar World, he says that when he was nineteen or twenty, a group of aliens came into his room, hooked into his head, and downloaded all of the information from his brain He supposedly woke up while they were doing it, and they quickly disconnected. You know, one would think that alien life forces wouldn't need to plug in with some kind of USB cable.ight They can travel thousands of light years, but they can't use the Bluetooth This alien encounter inspired Hagar, as he says, quote, It sent me on a course of curiosity bought a telescope and I started reading UFO books and I just got into the whole thing One of those books he read was Aliens Among us, where he certainly discovered the term walk in from Freddy Love walks in Nothing feels so sae ishome walking H Did you hear that? You heard that. Some kind of alien waits for the opening, then simply pulls a string. Love comes walking in. It's like a jingle for eternal values. Yes, but accompanied by the world's greatest guitar player. No disrespect to Jimy Hendrix. Naturally. Look, it goes on. listen to these lyrics So S behere Liz, did you catch that last part? Earth returns to what it was before? I sense a hint of Doomsday coming. M. Yep Freddy's ultimate plan in a pllatinum selling album The song itself reached number twenty two on the top one hundred billboard charts, and I personally remember slow dancing to the song in nineteen eighty six as I suspect, many people did. Not o, Tyler. I slow danceced to Key Sweat and Usher. It's seven o'clock on the d. I'm in my drive cruising the stet How do you dance? How You can't even slow dance to that You know, I have a friend, Chad, a huge Van Halen fan. and he actually played Love Walks in at his wedding immediately after they exchanged vows And he had no idea This song was inspired. by an eagle maniacal cult leader Sorry Chad, we just ruined your wedd Even though we were a very small group We had an effect on pop culture kind of crazy looking back at it. If we weren't, we were less than a hundred people. I happen to know a few stats about the human body. Oh dear, I hear the mild rumblings of useless trivia coming down the track. For example, every time you breathe, you bring in twenty five sextillion molecules of oxygen, which means that every day you will likely inhale at least one molecule from the breaths of every person that has ever lived Is that why I'm tasting Cleopatra? I could go on. Butook guys, just because someone knows random facts about the body, doesn't mean you should take their medical advice. Nor should you go on the TikTok wormhole of questionable medical advice from these so called experts. The care you deserve should come from trusted professionals and not randos on the internet, or a podcast. And the best way you can find these professionals is with ZCDC ZockDoc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them, and treat almost every condition under the sun. Like hypertoosis, also known as the werewolf syyndrome. And wasn't Michael J. Fox such a dreamy werewolf til? With ZockDoc, there are no surprises. Choose from thousands of patient reviewed doctors and specialists Browse doctor profiles, upload and verify your insurance information. and get the care you need. Go to zockdoc dot com slash in accult and download the ZockDoc app for free. Then find and book a top rated doctor today. Many are available within twenty four hours. That's ZOCdoc dot com slash inccult com slash in A cult Insurance isn't one size fits all. And that's why drivers have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years now With the nameame Your Price tool, you can tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you the options that fit within your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive dot com find a rate that works for you with the nameame Your Price tool. Progressive Casualty insurance company and affiliates, price and coverage matched limited by state law So where is Hoyt now He's graduated from Princeton and living in New York where he is full on eternal values. He was staying in Freddy's one bedroom apartment, one of the chambers of the pyramid. He would stay in the bedroom, and then the rest of us, two people, sometimes seven people sleeping on the floor at night is like an ashrom You had a one inch foam mattress. we would roll it up. and then put it in the closet. and then at night you'd roll it out and a pillow in a blanket and that was it I had about a Three. By five foot space in the closet that was mine and that was it. That was the only part of the apartment that was really mine. and where I could put my clothes and things like that The apartment was in Manhattan, near the East River on fifty fourth Street and First Ave. Not a bad piece of property. But when Hoyt wasn't at home, he was off being handsome flying all over Europe. The way I'd like to frame it as an extreme is I'm staying in a five star hotel. I fly back on the Concorde come back to the apartment I am tuckking my bag and I go to sleep on my mat You know, it was kind of like I had these two personas. I was born John Richards Hoy And when I had to join the union There was already an actor named John Hoyt. So I said you had to come up with a new name and in your twenty You're old Mental Im like, I can see Hite Richards and lightights But then the mechanism that it served me in my career was I always felt a little bit like Hite Richards was my Clarkette, you know, that was the persona I took on to be seen in the world. And in that persona, Hoyite Rridardes stayed in the nice hotels. Hoyt Richards, you know went on the nice flight But that's not me So I would play the role. And I'd try to see it as best I could from that point of view and then I'd come back and be with my spiritual family But Freddie's not dumb He was never gonna to let Hoyt out of his grasp And the other part of it was I was giving all the money back to the group, so I would pick up my paycheck from forward and I would figure out how much money I needed to pay my bills And then I take the rest of it out in cash And then I'd hand it to Freddy And then there'd be times like I'd go to Europe and I'd literally come back but like twenty or thirty K in my socks And then I come back and I just, you know, just hand that stuff over to him It seemed to be the more I gave away, the more money I started to make And that was the pattern that kind of developed like The more I give it away more of my stars started to rise. I got him a credit card. At that point, I had like a platinum American Express card. You cant spend ten, fifteen K a month on that fucking credit card that I'd have to pay at the end of the month. and acting like a holy roller And also I loveved being generous. And I also realized that it brouought me privileges, you know, I kind of liked being the Golden Goose on some level And the main key that he said to me over and over again again good Lord H You are just impossible Y generosity will save you in the end Whoa, whoa, whoa back up Why did he call you Lord H? I think the name giving part of building that personality. you could use certain names like lord or lady or duke or duchess, he'd kind of you know give you a sense of royalty attached to it because he was very, very effective at introducing you to someone in a very inflated version, an exaggerated version of who you were Yeah, that's a part of the love bombing phase, right? I mean, He was very, very quick to tell myself and others then how much he loved them. You know, so you know, I think when you grow up in a family like I did where we didn't really throw around the love word too much. that when someone does it very flippently, it's very effective And, like many cult leaders, Freddie was extremely charismatic and charming He could work a room like he was liiberaci Do you think Liberacci could work a room, Tyler? If a piano was in it, yes Freddy had a kind of sense of humor that would like make you laugh, sometimes like a belly laugh, he was just a master entertainer And then this sense of Purpose was great I was so enthralled at them at the time There were definitely some great times. We had all felt like we had found our spiritual family So You have all these people that you really respect And you really, really like Can't you just sacrifice one lifetime and give it your life this time to service and to God and helping the planet Part of the dogma of eternal values was about true selflessness Can you live a life that is entirely about being of service And and not make it about your own hopes, dreams and ambitions. just reallyly handed over to a greater cause And not everyone would say yes to that, but Because of that, I really respected everyone else who had kind of bought in that way. That original thing you signed up for is beautiful and noble and wonderful Yeah I committed myself to this group for the rest of my life be perfectly candid, the fact that I'm in this group and thinking I'm going to be a leader of the new age, you know, I literally got to the point where I would step on a plane and I would think to myself, I wish I could just announce everyone here and they don't have to worry because I've got such important work I'm going to do on this lifetime. Everyone on the plane is safe You're all safe And that's how you used to think. I feel safe. right real I feel safe. I feel safe. I feel safe That's how delluded I was But he wasn't alone. There were many others sleeping on the mat, working for the group, nights and weekends all in the hope of returning to the star Arcurus to live as a hydrogen being. This is of course all based on the holy words of Fredrick von Mills. But like most cult eaters He didn't really practice what he preached We thought he was living the same way, but he had kind of covert and I found this all out after he died, but he would go free base cocaine for a few hours and come back. And he had to take all his teeth out. He basically lost all his teeth. He had just choppers Fr the drug use. The drug use Freddie actually claimed in the book Aliens Among Us that, quote, I sleep only three or four hours a night And I work twenty hours a day if we eat the right food and think the right thoughts Anyone can do that. Yes, the right food, the right thoughts, and copious amounts of cocaine And then also, you know, he did like five facelifts. Well he was his whole The thing was I can't stand looking like the old Frederick. I have to be closer to what I look like on Oct Earth. Oh, and another thing he preached was abstinence Well, there would be these quite questionable men that would arrive And he would say, Ohh, I've met this person on you know I'm trying to help them. and he would take them back into the back room And I thought he was like you know doing the ephemerous thing and you help put this person on track And then and then he'd come out and he's like, o, Lord H, Lord H this one's having such difficulty with his wife and look he's been shot That's always look at the scars and, you know, could we help? So I literally would peel off a hundred bucks thinking I'm helping someone rough in their way. And in fact He's getting a trick pulled in in the back room. You You were paying off his prostitute? Yeah. I had no idea Freddie says in the book Aliens Among us,Qote. teach my students that it is better not to engage in sex, but rather to redirect that drive into spiritual growth. I redirect my drive into the making of this podcast, Tyler. Our listeners certainly appreciate your abstinence, Liz. You're very welcome And boyfriends or girlfriends in the group Oh hell no The downfall of mankind was romantic love. get involved with anyone romantically. And That was a bgy Originally, the group started out very kind of monastic Mastic A great word. It's an adjective relating to monks, nuns, or others living under religious vows, or resembling or suggestive of monks or their way of life, especially in being solitary or celibate. Also known as the early stages of the pandemic Everyone's in their twenties and that really got to be problematic. I was given a green light that I could have encouters because I was out on the road and it kind of went along with my persona as being who I was but the group was really shut down in that way and that eventually got to the point where he was like, oh You just don't fuck each other then, you know, and that was a shit show Okay, so you could have sex, I guess, fine, just don't talk about it. But do not catch feelings and having babies? Oh hell hell no And also with the philosophy that the end was coming. So why would you ever bring a child into this cataclysm that's about to hit? Like how selfish are you? Yeah, that's the new slogan from Motherhood Mothers What a bunch of selfish bitches Liz, Wait, did you catch what Hite said? Did you hear that The end is coming. We give a doomsday call That's right. Another Doomsday Cult. Doomsday, Doomsdayom Doomsday Cult Tyler, there should be a calendar with all the doomsday days. Which seems like an appropriate time to bring up our was I in a Cult calendar. That's right. twelve months of Cults, Cult Cult. Was in a Cult Clendar. operators are standing by. We could like host costume parties on the doomsday D days and listeners can come Dressed up in that cult. will serve snacks and kool aid Now back to Height You know, you have to realize that we Frreder had prophesizied that the end times, which he basically plagiarized from Edgar Casey, who was a a psychic bagon I think thirties or forties down in Virginia Beach, who had talked about this pole shift Edgar Casey is the twentieth century's most famous psychic who made predictions while asleep. You know how I feel about psychics? Casey claimed to absorb books by sleeping on them And he gave over fourteen thousand documented readings before his death in nineteen forty five A fewew were correct, but the vast majority were wrong. L of averages A number of these were what Casey referred to as quote Earth changes, the belief that the world would soon enter a series of cataclysmic events causing major alterations to human life on the planet And one of these prophecies given in nineteen thirty six was sometime around the year. two thousand two thousand, Liz. He said, quote, When there is a shifting of the pollles, a new cycle begins He claimed that many areas that are now land would again become ocean floor and that Atlantis would rise from the sea and that the California coast would slip into the ocean. Why does everybody want California in the ocean so badly So Freddy adapted that into his own prophecy. The axis itself does not change. The magnetic pes will shift as the plates snap In the year nineteen ninety nine And all the present continents that exist as they exist in their present form today, one hundred and fifty miles inland will be submerged beneath the water within six hours. And im And with that ninety nine point nine percent of the population will be annihilated Fortunately, Freddie had predicted that a great leader would help during this time. As a matter of fact, the last president of a century will be a walk in that will prepare the multitudes for the horrendous times ahead. And that leader would be none other than Bill Clinton. We're going to leave that for y'all to interpret. All right because Freddy is in touch with the space people who are looking out for Earth We will be transported out of here while the pole shift happens will be rejuvenated trained. And then we'll come back and repopulate So knowing that they weren't going to be on Earth for too long, Hite didn't feel like he needed to plan for the future. Which meant not needing to save any money or worry about things like crow's feet or the elevens. You guys know what I'm talking about. Th damn elevens You know, as I said earlier, we were super tan in our group. you know, and I'm always tan and I've got Like makeup artists or others going, dude, you know, you might be damaging your skin I'd brush them off because in my mind, I'm like, dude, you have no idea I'm getting picked up by the space people. I'll be in their rejuvenation chamber. None of this's going to matter. I'm going to be tan until that happens. And that's how I looked at it I guess growing up in the era of Star Worth, I was just so excited to think that it's all real Freddie also predicted that prior to the poll shift there would be major storms and flooding that would remake the maps. AK global warming, Freddy You're no sensei he would be like, now you do know. in this dates and that that's when the storms are going to start. and this is the E a very powerful technique to try to tell someone Are you in or you out The storms all started coming. New York was going to be underwater. So it was really about moving out of New York and setting up the compound downown in North Carolina so that's going to beachfront property. And when was that supposed to? That was around the turn of the century. so we're all safe now. We missed that pull shift aiverted Probably because of all the prayers we gave. Yeah.oy Yeah. Thank you. Welcome, you're welcome guys, all are chanting You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind Well, here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with progressives save over nine hundred dollars on average Pop over to progressive. comot answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by In fact, ninety nine percent of their auto customers earn at least one discount Visit progressive. com and see if you can enjoy a little cash backack Progressive casualty Inurance Company and Affiliates. National average twelve month savings of nine hundred and forty six dollars by new customers surveyed, who saved with P progressive between June twenty twenty four and may twenty twenty five. potential savings will vary. All right, so folks, normally, Liz and I we record together in a booth in Los Angeles, but right now, through the magic wonders of technology, we are actually half a world away. I'm in Australia. Yeahah. How you going? Tyla. What the hell you doing in Australia, Liz? I'm here because my fiance is directing a movie. That is so fantastic. goodood for him. Give us a little dirt, Liz. Give us some movie star shit. What's what? whoo's in? He' in it? o Um, Well, you had to guess He's a major Australian celebrity. He's working with Bluey. Bluey. It's Bluey, yeep Louie is really cool in person No, it's not bled down. Well, whoever it is It's wonderful. I think it's definitely something to crow about So congratulations, Liz. Now on the show we talk about cults Obviously, But the landens into them is through one person's individual experience. But what makes a cult a cult? I mean, what's the difference between a workout class and a workout cult, a religion and a religious cult? Well, it all comes down to a charismatic leader I try to tell people Cult leader is very similar pathology to a serial killer in the sense that most serial killers were made to feel abandoned or abused at a very young age and they experience this sense of powerlessness these certain types will seek out situations where they feel powerful They can put someone else in that position powerlessness, but they're now pulling the strings to put that person in that place and that actually feels G to them. It's almost like a fix, like like an addict That's why they keep growing a group because once you've got someone indoctrinated, it's not so exciting anymore. Now you have to go off and get someone else. And that becomes the evolution of the cult leader kind of you know, building the tribe around them And Frederick von Mers was no different. But behind the curtain he was just Freddy from Brooklyn When I think back on it, he's just acting out of these wounds that he doesn't understand that he's not dealing with and he's acting out in a way that just feels good, but it's destructive to others And I think that the part that was most challenging about him is he would he could be so funny and really, really just engaging and fun to be around, and then he could turn on a dime and just rip you apart like no one's ever done. So That was the part that you you were so attracted to this fun part. But this lurking part in the back of this other side that could come out was terrifying And that terrifying part sadly had to be exorcised somehow I'm also watching him punish people all the time and I did receive some punishment, but less than others, for sure John he would just slap the shit out of his face like just physically beat him There's another guy whose name was Paul sweetest guy and super well read and articulate and smart. And he had become kind of Freddy's man servant and he would beat the shit out of Paul sometimes and all claiming he was trying to break through his ego people alwaysways say like like how would you why would you take the abuse But when you think you're encountering someone who's godly on some level that This is somehow for your benefit o, no, it can't be abused. This person's got to be operating in my favor And this is the stuff that that's hard for me to live with is is asking that question, well, why didn't I stop it? rightight The answers I come up with is I was shit scared. I was afraid it would turn on me. I rationalized in some way that he was doing this for Paul's benefit or John's benefit Those are some of the uncomfortable. for sure We had a system of punishment that we would call the hot seat where you basically get isolated and put down in a chair or some scenario like that and the group like mob, you know comes at you and it's like it's like hurling stones If you do not in essence throw stone. then the whole mob comes at you and now you're in the hot season someone would be behaving out of alignment to the principles that we were supposed to be living by, you know? So whher whether they were being lazy or they were being secretive or whatever it might be, Boy do they get taken down? I remember this one guy They found a candy bar in his pocket, you know, and it's like you would have thought he'd shot somebody the way he was treated, you know. And so many things were blown out of proportion. L if you literally took clothes out of a drawer and then you didn't close the drawer completely, left it just because you were just rushing. I could put you notaz sei Because the fact that you do not have the thoroughness to do this all the way to completion, when we most need you to do this, when our lives are at stake, this is where you're going to fall short. So if you don't get it together now, you're going to end up killing all of us because you left the dwit. So I've been on both sides and neither one of them is fun You would get punished if you did something self serving? Yeah, sure. Lg, early in my modeling career, I had a job, which was at a hotel down in Stain. Lucia And part of my payment was a free week back at that place day before I left hit it off with the aerobics teacher or she kind of ran the gym or whatever And so I was like, hmm, maybe I'll just go back this, you know Christmas time and going seeight and I had this wonderful like a honeymoon experience, you know going back. But when that came out later that I had done that I mean, it was like I could never live it down Never living L' like the world's coming in and you're down in S.t Luci, you're having a honeymoon with some woman, you know, And so I learned pretty early on. yeah, that's not acceptable behavior. So no, you don't ever get to leave notot for a fun weekend. Not at all. was certainly, uh Don't leave cowards do that You leave, you're fucking just gonna get crushed You're Satan's child. So he stayed, eventually losing all contact with his former life My family really struggles with it. My mother was the first one to diagnosed was wrong and actually used the word called There was a twelve year period where I just broke contact with all of them. And so I've got all these letters and cards I kept a lot of stuff and my parents kept a lot of stuff of those Exchanges. My family always did a Christmas card to give a picture of everyone. and so at first I started to disappear. There's always a letter with the picture saying what all the kids are up to And then at a certain point, it's like, oh, well, our son's still doing the modeling and we see him in pictures, and we're still praying for him. And then there's just no mention of me for another ten years. It's like I'm not even in the family I've got a birthday card. My mother says, you know, I haven't seen you and the card basically says, I haven't seen you three and sixty five days, you know she crosses that out put three thousand six hundred fifty because they've been ten years. She's like,re we still love you and we're praying for you. Where were these letters sent? To New York. Somebody hid them from you or you No, you know, it's one of these mysteries. I don't know whether I just kept them or whether I returned them to sendnder. I don't know, but I had no contact. It was February of nineteen ninety, twelve years after Ht first meets Freddy. And ten years before the world was going to end, Freddie gets contacted by the journalist, Marie Brenner, who's a well known writer with Vanny Fert. kind of I think she's written books osing a lot of stuff. So she, someone from her family or friend of her family had a young boy who got involved with Turn of Ves. I don't remember his name He'd gotten out through an intervention And so Marie Bernet heard about the group. I think that's why she came on the story And she was really adamant to make him pay, so to speak. And they lied to Freddy and basically said, Ohh, we're doing these stories on all the great spiritual teachers in America right now. We've heard about your work We love the interview At this point, Freddy was quite ill, suffering from what he said was a stapff infection But no illness could stop that man's ego. And he was like, yes, absolutely, you know you would have gone to the opening app envelope Marie Brenner spent time with Freddie and his followers. She did her research, and she started writing her takedown of eternal values One of my friends from college was working for Vanity Fair And had given me a heads up saying, you know, they're doing this. I go yeah, yeah, I've heard it's going be great. He's like I don't think it's going be very good at letting to let you know, I'm like And then the woman and Marie Burnner tried to call me once and I refused to talk to her because I've been given the heads up. I'm like, I'm not going to talk to her. She's going to spend this, you know, this is this is the evil outsiders, you know, the people in the matrix, you know, trying to hurt the people who' gotten out of the matrix but then The Vandy Fole came out. I mean, as you can imagine, that's awful article was called Eastide Alien, and in it she describes her initial visit with Freddie I was staring into the face of Fredrick von Meur. We were sitting in his apartment, an elaborately decorated airy on East fifty fourth Street Behind him were a golden Buddha and a massive display of pink Azaleas and lilies that seemed to take up an entire wall. Pulsating ionization machines cleansed the air and billowing clouds were painted on the walls What is that? I asked is the beyond? he answered This. is a holy place She goes on Qote, Near me, six of von Mer's friends and followers stared at us as if hypnotized throughout our interview. They all had striking similarities. They were all young, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, and quite good looking with taut muscular bodies During this lengthy article, Brenner attempted to figure out Freddy's background, to no avail But she discovered that he was a failed model, and she addressed how he wormed his way into the New York social scene She discovered that in nineteen seventy seven, he had been writing checks on his godmother's account to himself after she had had a stroke and was unable to speak Who does that, Tyler It's actually quite crazy. It talks a lot about his grandmother and how he took advantage of her. But the article also spends a great deal of time discussing Freddy's gemstone business, which he marked up shoddy gems three hundred percent He also addressed his prophecies and his abject racism, which were tied together. You're not going to believe what Liz is going to read next Terrible storms will destroy the world all be dead within ten years Only the elite will be saved I am here to train the leaders of the New Age Everyone I am training for leadership will have perfect features I believe in the master race Jews have been evil since the beginning of time Hitler was divinely inspired What a mother fucking piece of shit, Tyler. Oh, none of that And for Ht, as you can imagine, It's a total shit show This whole thing comes out kind of exposing him. I mentioned in it I tried to call my parents because it was everything the worst version of you could imagine your kid would get involved in The thing that was so interesting is as we were picking up the pieces Fredia died Fredd dad like Five days before the article hit Freddy had said that he didn't expect to be around for the poll shift in the year two thousand, and that was one prophecy that was true His ego couldn't survive the truth. And while he was dying of this supposed stapff infection, members of the group all took turns watching over him push was to try to get him to Carolina We thought he would like magically heal when he got to North Carolina on some level. I was in Reno, Nevada working for GQ as one does. and I get the call that that he's not going to make it to the weekend and I need to come back. And that blindseted me because I was completely delusional in thinking that he was going to somehow survive all this. and I remember the whole flight just trying to cope with the fact that guess there's no way he's going to die. But then when I got there He looked like a human skeleton He was dying. You're basically starving to death. You know, your organs are shutting down, you're losing weight N never fun to watch someone die like that. You know I don't care, you know who they are or what they've done. It's just it's a horrible way to go. The whole house was filled like thirty plus people. We were each given fifteen minutes with him And this dropper, which was you know had water, they said, you know, just keep them hydrated You know, you give them the droppers and it kind of said I whatever words I said to him. and And And we found out later that we were all feeding him morphine. unbeknownst to ourselves to try to speed up his death And then because we had all kind of flown in and, you know, made it down this weekend Fz and David decided. when he continued to hang on During that night, they just put a pillow over his head and ended it And uh And that's how he died Days later, after an autopsy, the group discovered that Freddy didn't die of a staph infection. It actually was AIDS related. And eventually Paul, I think he finally came forward. and then I was like, well How did he get it? And he's like, o Oh my God, he goes, No, you know, I would go down and find those male hustlers on forty second Street. and that's those guys that we be coming in. I'm like What So now their leader was dead withithout our fearless leader, then it was like, who's gonna run les and that's where Gy Fritz took over, but he didn't have any of the Chrisman savvy and We usurped him, kicked him out And then we just put all our focus on getting everyone the North Carolina and Do they make it You'll find out