Revelations, Revisited

Summary

RISK! Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: Revelations, Revisited

Release Date: October 2, 2025

Host: Kevin Allison
Guest/Storyteller: Scott Whitney

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Episode Overview

This episode of RISK! revisits “Revelations,” a powerful and deeply personal story originally told by Scott Whitney in 2013, chronicling his struggle with faith as a Jehovah’s Witness, a pivotal encounter with a man named Paul, and the aftermath of their relationship. The episode is divided into two main segments: a rebroadcast of Scott’s original story and a candid 2025 conversation between Kevin and Scott about how their perspectives—and the story’s resonance—have evolved over more than a decade.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Scott Whitney’s Story: "Revelations" (Begins at 04:25)

• Setting the Scene: Scott, a lifelong Jehovah's Witness in crisis, describes the experience of door-to-door ministry, which he finds uncomfortable and dissonant with his internal doubts.
• Encounter with Paul: On a routine Saturday, Scott knocks on Paul's door in a housing project. Paul is visually scarred from severe burns and lives reclusively due to lifelong mental illness.
• Paul’s Backstory: Paul reveals that, plagued by a voice he identified as Christ, urging him that he was “beyond redemption,” he attempted suicide by grabbing high-tension wires, leaving him physically and emotionally scarred.
• Struggles with Faith: Scott feels hypocrisy and uncertainty as he uses the teachings of a faith he no longer fully believes in to comfort Paul, who finds hope in the message even as Scott feels it to be “vapid and hollow.”
• Turning Point: Over time, Paul grows resistant to Scott’s reassurances. Eventually, Paul leaves a devastating voicemail blaming Scott for further confusing and hurting him:

  “This message is for Scott... everything you’ve been telling me ... has left me more fucked up than I have ever been... please never, never stop here again.” —Paul (16:35)

• Aftermath: The incident marks the end of Scott’s ministry and, more significantly, his sense of obligation to a God he no longer understands:

  “That was the last time I ever went to anybody else's door. And it was the last time that I ever felt like I had any kind of responsibility to a God that I couldn't understand.” –Scott Whitney (17:47)

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2. Revisiting the Story: A Candid 2025 Conversation

Shifts in Perspective (Begins at 20:06)

• Scott and Kevin reflect on the gulf between how stories “land” years later versus when first told.
• Scott admits:

  “I think I was struck by how different[ly] the story lands for me now than it did when we workshopped it and when we recorded it... I’m just [coming from] a totally different perspective.” —Scott Whitney (20:06)

• He confesses that much of his initial clarity was superficial:

  “[Back then] I’m telling the story as though I have my shit together... and in retrospect... I didn’t have the clarity that it seemed like I did in the storytelling.” –Scott (21:34)

The Difficulty of Leaving Faith Systems

• The isolation and disorientation after separating from a totalizing belief system:

  “It was such a totalizing faith... How could you possibly have all that sorted out?” –Scott (22:20)

• Comparison to other ideological bubbles or cult-like groups, with Kevin paralleling his own Catholic upbringing and struggle as a gay teen:

  “There was that cognitive dissonance, I guess, of knowing I was gay, but also feeling like, yeah, but I'm not—I don't believe I'm going to hell for this.” –Kevin Allison (25:50)

• Both note that leaving a faith community carries risks of feeling “morally unmoored” and harming others inadvertently:

  “That can be a dangerous time... you're unmoored. You're morally unmoored. I shouldn't say you. I was morally unmoored, psychologically unmoored.” –Scott (27:25)

The Dangers of Persuasion & Storytelling

• Admitting reluctance to proselytize or persuade others after personal experiences with disillusionment:

  “What I knew personally to be true… had come to seem entirely unrelated to the process of persuasion. I did not want any longer to persuade anyone of anything.” —Scott quoting Rachel Cusk, paraphrased (33:44)

• Kevin and Scott both voice wariness about the “confidence” of groups, leaders, or even algorithms feeding narratives to the masses:

  “There is a system, deeply empowered and deeply moneyed, that is feeding you this algorithm... we were taught a certain amount of critical thought, just to the extent where I felt like the ideas were coming from me. And they weren't.” –Scott (37:15)

On the Blurred Line Between Characters and Real People

• Both wrestle with the ethical implications of turning real people (like Paul) or formative experiences into “characters” for stories:

  "I'm exploiting Paul. And then I wrap it in all the Other stuff." –Scott (43:31) “You really created a character here to be a function in a story.” –Kevin (42:48)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Certainty and Doubt:

  “The worst have all the confidence and the best lack all surety...” –Kevin paraphrasing Yeats (33:26)

• On Finding Community After Belief:

  “Leaving that religion is so specific... It's a very niche experience and lonely as you try to build up that new belief system, system, morality and all that, all that important stuff.” –Scott (30:48)

• On Storytelling Structure vs. Emotional Truth:

  “The structure of storytelling, like needing to tell a compelling story that lands somewhere... kind of primed the pump... it was an intellectual exercise that I had a lot of emotional work yet to do to internalize.” –Scott (38:49)

• On Group Dynamics:

  “Some of the power exchange and just the way that the collective psyche starts working can very easily start to get culty in any group of people … it’s kind of laying latent in wherever two or more are gathered.” –Kevin (30:48)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Introduction by Kevin Allison | | 03:14 | Host introduces Scott Whitney and sets up revisiting the story | | 04:25 | Scott Whitney’s original "Revelations" story begins | | 16:35 | Paul’s voicemail to Scott (“more fucked up than I have ever been…”) | | 17:47 | Scott’s realization and final break with religious responsibility | | 18:15 | Host reactions: “Wow, that was extraordinary to hear again.” | | 20:06 | Post-story conversation begins: reflections on changes in perception | | 22:20 | Scott talks about the isolating aftermath of leaving a totalizing faith | | 25:50 | Kevin parallels his Catholic background and experience as a gay teen | | 27:25 | Scott on the danger of being morally unmoored after leaving | | 30:48 | Challenges and pitfalls of finding post-belief community; cult-like group dynamics | | 33:44 | Rachel Cusk on the futility of persuading others; narrator’s current stance | | 37:15 | Scott draws parallels between religious indoctrination and algorithm-driven information | | 42:50 | Kevin and Scott discuss ethics of storytelling using real lives as narrative ‘characters’ | | 45:29 | Frank Zappa quote: “Buddy, we're all wearing uniforms. Don't kid yourself.” | | 47:16 | Unused anecdote: hazard and liminality of leaving a faith described (Scott) |

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Tone & Atmosphere

• The episode is reflective, candid, and layered with vulnerability, especially as both host and guest reckon with the long shadows cast by former belief systems.
• There’s a palpable sense of humility, uncertainty, and caution about “knowing too much” or having absolute answers.
• The language remains direct, occasionally irreverent ("Who gives a shit?", “fucked up”), mirroring the show’s uncensored, emotionally raw ethos.

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Conclusion

This episode of RISK! is a profound meditation on faith, identity, and the risks inherent in both losing and gaining beliefs. Through Scott Whitney’s original story and the honest re-examination more than a decade later, listeners are invited to reflect on how beliefs shape—and sometimes distort—life choices, relationships, and one’s sense of self. The conversation also serves as a cautionary tale on harming others (even inadvertently) through misplaced certainty or well-intended intervention, and the never-ending work of building meaning and morality after leaving “totalizing” systems.

For those who have experienced seismic shifts in worldview, or who have loved ones navigating the liminal space between belief and doubt, this episode will resonate deeply.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign hello folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison and by the time this episode comes out I will be well into my move to Thailand. So I'm pre recording this from the distant past in my New York apartment where I no longer have very much furniture. So what a time of transitions. But in this episode we're revisiting a story by Scott Whitney that he told on risk back in 2013, plus a conversation that he and I had had about the story this year in 2025. Now if you're hearing this on our podcast feed and you want to watch the episode instead, there's a link to that in the show notes. But all of our audio podcasts going back 16 years are at risk-show.com or anywhere you get your podcast. Now there is a mention of a suicide attempt in this story and and some discussion of cult like systems, so be warned about that. But because this story is all about beliefs which can change over time, it was fascinating to check back in with Scott all these years later after he heard the story this time in 2025. So a quick break and when we come back Scott Whitney and I will revisit and review Revelations. We'll be right back.

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[A]

We're back. Hey folks, I'm here with Scott Whitney, who I haven't seen since 2013. We when the story we're about to hear was first recorded. It's great to see you again Scott.

[B]

Great to see you Kevin.

[A]

It's a changed world since we last saw each other.

[B]

And we're changed people, I imagine.

[A]

Yes, indeed. We first met in a workshop. It was an in person workshop. I've just started recently teaching workshops again online. But back in the day, we. We did the very peculiar thing of meeting as people in a room. And you shared this story and I thought, oh my gosh, we have to have that on the podcast. And it kind of became an instant classic when we ran it. But I haven't heard it in a long, long time, probably a decade. So this will be really interesting to listen to it together. So let's do that now. Let's play Revelations by Scott Whitney and we'll see what we think of it.

[C]

It's a Saturday morning and I'm working in a housing project, knocking on doors. I'm in this hallway with brown industrial carpeting. The sounds of daytime TV are spilling out from the apartments along with the smell of cheap soap. And I turn to the door on my right. It's my turn to knock. I knock on this hollow core door and I can hear the sound reverberate in the apartment. And as usual, I'm praying metaphorically that the person won't come to the door. The door opens up and the first thing that I notice is that the apartment is pitch black. And as my eyes adjust, I see the man that I would come to know as Paul. His face looked like he hadn't aged at all, and he had aged horribly at the same time. It was round and kindly and cherubic, but it was also pale and pockmarked and weathered. His hair was just a tangled mess like he had had bedhead for a decade. And I noticed that his fingers wrapped around the door jamb were just stained yellow with nicotine stains. Then I noticed this tangle of burned flesh at his wrist. And it disappeared under the sleeve of his long john shirt. And then it reappeared right at the base of his throat and wrapped around the back of his neck, up across his head. Something horrible had happened to this man. And I was kind of brought back to the moment when he said in this really kind way, hi, what can I do for you this morning? And I launched into the presentation that I'd done a million times. Hi, my name is Scott. I know you weren't expecting me. I won't take up much of your time. And then I'd get into some kind of existential theme that I could sort of get behind. And I asked him, do you think it's reasonable to believe in the face of all the injustice that we see in the world today that there is some kind of God that exists and is interested in us. And I really didn't have an answer to that question at this point, at least one that satisfied me. But fortunately not too many people were interested in hearing my answer. So it worked out. But Paul was. He said, yeah, I have no doubt that God exists, and I'm equally sure that he has no interest in. I had been one of Jehovah's Witnesses almost my entire life, and I had always really struggled with the structure, with the regimen of that lifestyle. I hated going to people's doors like this and telling them things they didn't want to hear when they didn't want to hear them. I hated having to explain to my co workers that I didn't celebrate Christmas because originally it was a holiday that honored the Roman God Saturnalia. When inside I'm thinking, who gives a shit? There's a lot of good reasons not to celebrate Christmas that isn't one. I just struggled with the whole structure of the lifestyle. But on the flip side, I totally bought the belief system. It made sense to me. It provided satisfying answers to a lot of the big questions. Whether or not God existed and if so, what was my responsibility in the face of that? Why is the world so fucked up and is it going to get better? These all had satisfying answers. And fundamentally it felt true. It felt like I had truth. And if I had truth, then suddenly I didn't have any choices to make. What I wanted didn't matter. That was irrelevant. All that mattered was truth. But when I hit 30, the old story started to break down and I could feel that I just didn't have the conviction that I once did. And I had this nagging doubt in the back of my head that if this wasn't truth, if this wasn't truth, I'm as obligated to get out as I had been to stay. But I also had to consider the implications. Because if I walk away from this faith, I am entirely losing my community. Friends, family literally will pass me on the street as though I'm a ghost. So I need to be pretty damn sure. There's really no taking a break either to sort this stuff out. If I stopped going to meetings or stopped going out in field service, that is knocking on people's doors, I'm going to hear about it out of concern. My friends are going to pay attention because they're concerned. And attention is the last thing that I wanted when I'm trying to sort this stuff out. So I decided to try to work it out under the radar and just go through the motions. And that meant continuing to go out in field service. Knocking on people's door on a Saturday morning is weird. Even if you're not experiencing a crisis of faith. You're there wearing a tie, you got a book bag and a Bible, trying not to feel like a salesman, and nobody wants you there. People would slam the door in my face pretty regularly. One guy came to the door cleaning his gun in some kind of gesture. What you really wanted were return visits. That's when you had already called on somebody cold and they agreed to let you come back so you got a better chance of seeing somebody with a friendly face. They may not answer, but the other benefit is that you get to drive out to their place on a Saturday morning and eat up some time when you would normally be knocking on doors of people that don't want to talk to you. So RVs are the place to be. I remember when I was a kid, I had a friend, we couldn't have been older than 12. I had a friend that announced in a car group when we were out in field service that he had a return visit, this guy that he really had to get back and talk to. So because this is just more productive than everything else we could be doing, we drove the 45 minutes out to the return visit. And then we just start driving up and down these suburban streets because he can't remember the address. And we're just hunting for this house for almost an hour until he finally gets really excited and points and says, that's it. That's the house I totally remember. So we pull over, he and I jump out, we run up to the door, and just as he's about to knock on the door, he turns to me and admits, I have no idea who lives here. I'm totally faking this. So we just sort of pantomime knocking on the door for the sake of the people in the car and then run back. But, you know, it ate up two and a half hours. And if I'm honest, things really hadn't changed a lot for me at 30. In the face of this period of deep crisis of faith, I had encountered this man, Paul, that seemed really interested in what we had to say and what we were talking to people about. At the end of our chat, I asked him, as I always did, if it would be alright if we came back, if we set up a return visit. And now would be the time for Paul to say, no, I appreciate you stopping by it was great talking to you, but I'm all set. But Paul didn't say that. He said, yeah, that'd be great. Look forward to seeing you next week. So the next Saturday, I went back to Paul's and miraculously he answered the door again. We picked up the conversation right where we left off. And it was in that conversation that Paul told me how he got those burns. He had suffered from mental illness almost his entire life, and when he was much younger, that manifested itself in this deep and real sense that he was evil. When he reached his late teens and early 20s, he started to hear this internal voice and it identified as Christ. And that voice said to him, paul, you're beyond redemption. It would be better if you didn't exist. You are an enemy of mine. In his mid-20s, and he really started to take on what that voice was saying. He said, one night I had just had it. I just felt like I was drowning in these voices and I decided to do something about it. So I climbed a utility pole by my house and I reached out and I grabbed a hold of the high tension wires. And the last thing that I remembered was just an explosion of white light. The next morning, Paul woke up in the emergency room. He'd survived, but of course now he was horrifically disfigured. And as he laid in that ER bed in the days after, the voice came back to him and it said, you survived, but don't think that anything has changed. You're still beyond redemption. And after he left the hospital, Paul became a recluse. And one Saturday morning I knocked on his door. So as I kept going back to Paul's and we kept having these conversations, I was really wrestling with what to do because he seemed to really be enjoying the message that I was sharing with him. But it was a message that I really didn't value anymore. He seemed to derive hope and comfort from the thoughts that had sustained me for so long. But to me they just seem vapid and hollow. Now and then I thought, who am I to impose my crisis of faith on this guy who seems to really be responding to it. My doubts are just a voice that I'm hearing. It really has no place in this conversation with this man. So instead, I told him what I knew I could, what had worked for me for so long. He would tell me, scott, I'm telling you that I'm so confident that I'm doomed, that I'm just waiting out my days. And I would tell him, that's really not what the Bible says. There's no such thing as I understood it, between being damned for all time and saved for all time. Doesn't work like that. We're each free moral agents making decisions in the moment. And if you want to choose differently, if you come to understand that God expects something different of you than what you've been doing, you get to do it right now. The past is the past. And again, Paul, that just resonated for him. But each time I went back, as the weeks and months went on, Paul seemed to respond less and less to that message. As much as I tried to reinforce that his fate had not been written for him, he constantly had objections, whether it be the voice that he heard, his own feeling of self worth. And he started to pull back from our conversations to some extent simultaneously. My doubts were not going away. And I stopped using the literature that we would use. I started just relying, and even this rarely, on some of the Bible verses that were kind of existential and had given me pause for reflect over the years. But even that was tough. It was tough to hear my own words. Things were falling apart. One Saturday morning, I went to Paul's apartment in field service, and I saw his car parked in the parking lot. When I went in the hallway, I heard his TV playing in his apartment. I knocked on his door and Paul didn't answer. I knocked again and I could hear him moving around inside, but he didn't want to answer the door. So I went back the next Saturday morning. And the same thing happened the Saturday after that. I decided to give it one more try. So I went and met with the group that was going to be going out in field service before I went to go visit Paul. And when I walked into the building, a good friend of mine came up and she seemed really concerned. And she leaned in and whispered to me and said, there's a message for you on the machine that I think you should hear. So I went into the back room and hit play. The answering machine started to play Paul's voice. And he said, this message is for Scott. This is Paul. Scott, everything you've been telling me over almost the past year, the entire message that you've been sharing with me has left me more fucked up than I have ever been. I feel so turned around and confused. I. I don't know which way is up. I feel despondent. I can only assume that that was your intention. And so congratulations, but please never, never stop here again. And I remember as that message played out, feeling like my feet were just anchored in concrete. I was leaning forward towards the machine. And it just felt like I could lean forward and touch my nose to the ground without falling over. And I remember thinking, he's mentally ill. This isn't about what I was telling him. This is not about me. I hadn't caused him any harm. And then I wished that I could be so sure. And that was the last time that I ever heard from Paul. That was the last time I ever went to anybody else's door. And it was the last time that I ever felt like I had any kind of responsibility to a God that I couldn't understand.

[A]

Wow, that was extraordinary to hear again. Holy shit. There's, there's a lot going on in that story.

[B]

Pretty wild to relive it to be sure.

[A]

Yeah. Holy cow. Okay, so we will be right back. We're going to take a short break and then Scott and I will settle in to discuss revisiting it. We'll be right back. When did making plans get this complicated?

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[B]

I think I was struck by how different, differently the story lands for me now than it did when we when we workshopped it and when we recorded.

[C]

It for the podcast.

[B]

It just it feel I'm just have a totally different perspective.

[A]

Fascinating in the story you're 30 and how old were you when you told the story?

[B]

About five years later? About 35.

[A]

And what were some of those feelings that came up about your perspective now?

[B]

You know, when we were working on the story back in 2013, to me, the story was about the person I was standing on Paul's doorstep. I've got one foot out of this religion, having clearly a crisis of faith, and I encounter this just jarring person who is something like the last straw. And then I'm telling the story as though I have my shit together, I have perspective. And now I'm out of this faith system, this world. And let me just share with you the perspective that I now have. And in retrospect, that I don't want to say I was full of shit, because it was all true, but I didn't have the clarity that it seemed like I did in the storytelling.

[A]

Well, when you say that, do you mean that you still felt very confused about, you know, religion and faith and all?

[B]

No, I don't. I think I'd settle that. That was sort of like, you know, a hard stop at the end of the sentence. But it was such a totalizing faith. You know, I mean, I used the word worldview. And it's just like your community are people who share your ideology, your view about how long the world's gonna survive. It's like, very def. It's so exacting and bizarre. And so at the time that you and I connected, I was about five years out. How could you possibly have all that sorted out?

[A]

Yeah, because you kind of grew up in living into a whole story world, you know?

[B]

Exactly. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that struck me about it, listening back, is how so many of us have been feeling so disoriented and busted up about, wait, what is this country that I thought I was living in? What is it about? And what future am I living into being a citizen of this country? You know, like, it's very consistently jarring and disorienting, and I think. And one of the most disorienting things about it is seeing loved ones who don't seem to be asking those questions.

[B]

I would even take it a step further and say, and not to make it all political, but as I look at sort of like the rise of the MAGA movement and the broad range of people who bought into it, boy, I'm not there. But at the same time, I do draw parallels to the things that I thought, the hermetically sealed world that I lived in, and I say in the story like, it made sense to me. I. You know, I'm not a rocket scientist, but I don't think I'm a total dummy either. And that was my worldview. Some really bizarre stuff. And so I think it's easy to say, like, I wouldn't fall for that.

[A]

Oh, yeah, right.

[B]

You know, given the right circumstances, I think that we all have a number, you know.

[A]

Oh, absolutely. You know, I feel like looking at various groups I've considered myself a part of, I can see more and more gaslighting, brainwashing, just kind of living inside certain boxes of thought that I am guilty of, other people in my life are guilty of. And whether it's political or philosophical or whatever, I remember, like, because I had a crisis of faith. I was raised very devoutly Catholic, and mine came during college and when I was a kid, I was a hypersexual kid from day one. So I was aware that I was gay when I was very, very, very young and felt that that meant I was gonna be going to hell and that I'd be ostracized from everyone I knew and love if everyone never found out and all of these things. But I still was incredibly searching, searching, searching for ways to defend the Catholic Church and the Vatican. When I was 16, I wrote this. You were supposed to write for a morality class that I had in high school. You were supposed to write an essay and it was supposed to be like maybe five pages long, where you take on some position of the Vatican, it was a Jesuit high school. And argue pro or against whatever the church's position was. And I wrote like a 37 page paper about homosexuality. And the news spread among the faculty of the school. Oh, my God. In 1986, for the first time ever, a boy at Saint X is writing on this issue. Yeah, like, there was so much. There was that cognitive dissonance, I guess, of knowing I was gay, but also feeling like, yeah, but I'm not. I don't believe I'm going to hell for this. And trying to, you know, pretzel logic to make it all make sense and still defend Catholicism in the process. But I think that. I think you're right, that it's interesting as you go through life to see other ways that you've bought into worldviews or philosophies or groups or whatnot, where it's hard to question it. And because you're constantly having to say, okay, where do I fit in and where am I going?

[B]

And I think you're really, you know, I heard you talking about stages. There's the stage of, like, now you're the apologist for the organization.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And I definitely went through that period where I didn't want a part of it, but if my new friends would bash the religion or call it a call. I'd say, well, you know, and I'd spin it. And then the next stage is when you completely break out of it. That can be a dangerous time. That can be a dangerous time because you're unmoored. You're morally unmoored. I shouldn't say you. I was morally unmoored, psychologically unmoored. And I'm coming from a system where, as my therapist loves to remind me, like, just, there is harm being done all over the place, and until you find your footing, you're carrying that harm for yourself and into other people's lives. So, you know. You know, when I listen back to the narrator that we just listened to, those are the stages that I'm hearing. You know, it's a little bit of an apologist, a little bit of just an unmoored, almost amoral person just trying to find his footing.

[A]

There is that. There is that. I saw an interview with George Michael back in the day, and I wish I had seen that when it was when the inter. Well, I guess. I guess he came out later. He wasn't. He didn't come out when he was first successful. He was hiding it for a long time. But in this interview, he was talking about how. Because I felt this so much when I was a kid that when you're gay, or at least, you know, at least back. Well, you know, it's. It's complicated from decade to decade. But when I grew up. To know you're gay is to have to start to question everything. Like, wait a minute. If. If I don't think this is immoral.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Then what do I think of, like, the rest of these ten Commandments and yada yada. And that. That's. That can be you. You can see kids or you can see anyone going too far in another direction. You know, rebellion or. Or just feeling completely lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

You know, I recently read a. There was a piece in the New York Times about this thing called Bite Club. And I don't know if you saw this piece. It was for shark bite survivors. And I think the gentleman who founded it was in Australia, and he realized that the situation, the trauma of that was so peculiar to the experience.

[A]

That.

[B]

The only people who could understand shark bite survivors are other shark bite survivors. And so they get together and discuss their stages of experience with that. And I kind of related, you know, I mean, leaving that religion is so specific. And you can find support groups, I think, online. Like, at the time I left, there was some Facebook support groups but the tone of the whole thing just didn't work for me. And so to your point, you're just, you know, you're floating solo. It's a very niche experience and lonely as you try to build up that new belief system, system, morality and. And all that, all that important stuff.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's one of the tremendous challenges about support groups based around something is that some of the power exchange and just the way that the collective psyche starts working can very easily start to get culty in any group of people, you know? Yeah. It's kind of laying latent in wherever two or more are gathered.

[B]

Well, good reference. And also, like everyone in that support group, at least for Witnesses, they had training about how to do. About how to do this, you know, And I found that it was a very dominant ideology that we need to expose them and we need to help people get out. And I just. I didn't really feel that way. I thought, like, leaving was so traumatic, it was so difficult. I wasn't 100% sure that it was worth it and that I'd want to. Want someone else to have to go through that.

[A]

Yeah, that. That thing of. That you experienced in the story of feeling like, well, who am I? Like, I. I don't feel like I'm standing on super solid ground myself, so what can I do? And there is that thing too, of people who have strong belief systems, don't give them up easily for. And sometimes for very good reasons, you know, like, it's fascinating to hear Paul and the way that you get. I get the impression from the story that Paul started to feel a little bit of hope that he hadn't felt in a while listening to you sort of pontificate. And then, you know, I mean, it's like, especially with his particular, whatever, mental illness, like, you couldn't conceive of the sort of pain he had been through, you know, and so to raise his hopes and then have him start feeling like, you know, why am I putting my faith in this kid? You know, even though you were 30, but it still felt that way. Yeah, yeah. Oi. It's. It's intense. That's what. You know, there's that the Yates quote about the worst, have all the confidence and the best, lack all surety or whatever. I feel so much that way.

[B]

I really like the writer Rachel Kusk, and she talks about this in one of her books. I think it was outline. She said. What I knew personally to be true. I'm paraphrasing. Had come to seem entirely unrelated to the process of persuasion. I. I did not want any longer to persuade anyone of anything. And I think that's really where I kind of landed.

[A]

That, that really. I hear that. And I feel like my history with this show, I feel like I've had some blockage in the latter half of the history of this show from feeling more and more that way, listening to other podcasters pontificate about this, that and the other, and like, just starting to become, you know, there's the line at the beginning of the Tao Te Ching, the dao that can be expressed is not the true dao, just the feeling that as soon as you say it, you're like, well, is that completely. How confident entirely am I in that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

And that, you know, our experiences are so singular, you know, like, we're all just trying to get by. And so whatever I come up with, it feels so right to me. But I've had the experience of having it feel so right and everyone telling me it is so right and having it be so goddamn wrong.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, I didn't know that in 2013. I don't even know that I know it now. But I just. When I sense that sort of like, moral rectitude within, I try to be really, really cautious because that's just for me.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I think that when, you know, I was talking earlier about, like, the story of America and the story of who our future and what we're living into and all those sorts of things, I spent many years like Chicken Little, like, you know, don't. Doesn't everyone understand this is the way it actually works? And all this sort of thing and kind of getting to a point of, you know what, you can't really know all the nitty gritty of these things. And I also think that the Internet itself, you said earlier that you don't have socials. And I've become more. Another thing that's caused a lot of blockage for me around writing in recent years or storytelling is that the algorithms are, like, replacing our thought patterns. It's so interesting to me to see the self help or pop psychology sorts of proverbs or whatever that people are teaching on online. And a lot of them are as if they've come down from the mountain to reveal this thing to you. And in fact, it's just this kind of like this thing that's just kind of arisen as a thing that people are saying because the algorithm keeps promoting it. So go on.

[B]

And I think that the myth there is. But I'm Selecting my media channels.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

Like, I'm a discerning consumer of media. I'm a digital native. And ignoring the fact that there is a system, deeply empowered and deeply moneyed, that is feeding you this algorithm. And I would just draw the analogy back to, you know, my experience in that religion that, you know, we were taught a certain amount of critical thoughts, just to the extent where I felt like the ideas were coming from me.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And they weren't. And this generalizes across systems. So, you know, what felt like a niche story at the time is. I think it's a story about systems and harm and the harm that we can carry to other people if we're not careful.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. I do really appreciate. I feel like in the final line, the final sentence of the story, you did seem to suggest that you had more questions than answers, that you were more confused than certain of anything.

[B]

Yeah, you know, I did notice the value of the storytelling. You know, we work together on the craft of it and the arc of it and details. And I think that the structure of storytelling, like needing to tell a compelling story that lands somewhere that has something that you can walk away with, kind of like primed the pump.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know what I mean? Like, well, here's the part where I have some insight. What the hell's my insight? And so it was an intellectual exercise that I had a lot of emotional work yet to do to internalize. But the storytelling was helpful in that.

[A]

Yes. I think that that's a fascinating point, is that in workshopping a story, we've had this happen quite a lot with people on risk or in workshops, that while you're workshopping a story, you can start to put different points together. You can start to realize, oh, this might connect to this in a way that I hadn't seen before, as far as my memories or my interpretations go. But I totally agree with you. I was so moved by Todd Haynes when he was. When people got so angry at him over his film Safe in the 90s, where Julianne Moore plays a housewife who is convinced that everything around her is unsafe, that there's germs everywhere. And so she joins this sort of cult where they're out away from the rest of society, and everyone's very determined to stay as clean and safe as they can. And at the. Well, it's a little bit of a spoiler. Okay, so spoiler alert. I'm gonna spoil it. At the end of the story, she's. So she's quarantined even from the rest of the cult. And she's in a tiny little trailer and she's looking in a mirror, and she' with a kind of almost blank expression on her face, repeating the mantras about how she's safe. And audiences were upset because they were like, is it a happy ending or is it a sad ending? And Todd Haynes said, that's the thing. It's almost immoral sometimes for a storyteller to come down so clearly on this being it's this or this or it's that. He said, if I really care about that character, I don't want to force upon that character what I want to be the point of the story.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

So, yeah, yeah, this. And I think now more than ever, you're right. It's important to be looking at what we believe in and question why and just be careful about getting too boxed in.

[B]

Yeah. And it's easy to see the missteps of the other.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Right. And when we're in the majority, even if that's just in the room.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's really easy to miss what's, you know, what the subtext is and how everyone else is being impacted by that.

[A]

Yeah. I also feel like, you know, talking about, like, Julianne Moore as a character in that movie, I'm sure that at a certain point, you might have felt a little guilt or shame or questioning of, like, using Paul as a character. You know, that's happened to me a lot. Like my story, man at Hawaii, about seeing a man who was clearly starving to death when I was a Jesuit on a mission trip to Peru, and making all this meaning out of that man's life and how that man fit into God, trying to tell me something and. And realizing you. You don't. You never knew the first thing about that person, and you really created a character here to be a function in a story.

[B]

Totally. I mean, let's. Let's be up front, you know? So if I remember correctly, we were coming up with three kind of story stems in the workshop that we pitched to a partner. And, you know, the brain. I think we had, like, 15, 20 minutes for the exercise. And my brain is like, all right, what are some interesting things that have happened to me that I can come up with? And Paul was one of the three. I'm not thinking, like, I want to tell this arc, the story of my journey out of this religion into a path of independence. I'm not intending to do it, but I'm exploiting Paul.

[A]

Right, right, right, right, right.

[B]

And then I wrap it in all the Other stuff. But yeah, I hear what you're saying, like with a little remove. I can see that.

[A]

Yeah. And it's interesting. The story still has tremendous value in that it instigates a conversation like this one right now.

[B]

Yeah. Telling the stories of my time in that religion became very difficult because there's so much context needed. You know, like if you've been to South Korea, you know, things about South Korea other people don't know who've never been to South Korea. Like it's, you know, I'd have to explain like the system of hierarchy and the religion and the worldview and the, like. I dropped the term RV in the story. I noticed this time around, you know, it's return visit, but how would you know.

[A]

Know that?

[B]

And so I, I realized probably after our workshop, if I want to talk about my. My past and this religion and I want it to land it, it probably better come in the form of a thoughtful story.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because just. Just starting to talk, you know, no one's going to know what the hell you're talking about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that's a way that I think that that narrative was. Was helpful. But as we talked about, you know, it can be a double edged sword.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. For sure. You know what I just thought of? I just thought of that moment. There's a moment in a Frank Zappa. I think it's like live at the well, wherever. It's a famous live recording of Frank Zappa in the late 60s. And someone yells at a cop or something like that in the audience, criticizing them for wearing a uniform. And Zappa says into the mic, buddy, we're all wearing uniforms. Don't kiss yourself.

[B]

Yeah, totally. Yep, totally.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

That's the truth.

[A]

Well, thank you so much for doing this. This was really, really fascinating.

[B]

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

[A]

Yeah. Holy cow. All right. We should have you back in 13 years or so.

[B]

Sounds great.

[A]

Thanks, Scott.

[B]

Thanks, Kevin.

[A]

And that is that. Thank you so much to Scott Whitney for his story and his revisiting with me. Let us know what you think of Scott's story or about any of these stories we've been revisiting many years later. And if you've got an old Risk story that's a favorite of yours that you'd like to hear us revisit with the Storyteller today, let us know. You can find us on all the socials riskshow or you can hit us up on the Risk Podcast fans discussion group on Facebook or on Reddit. We're at R Risk Podcast or you can just email me directly at [e-mail] and if you've got a story that you'd like to tell us about losing your faith or an unlikely friendship, just go to risk-show.com submissions and send us your pitch. Because, folks, today's the day. Take a risk.

[B]

You know, one thing that I had thought of in thinking about this podcast, and I didn't end up bringing it up because it didn't fit, but I remember when I was a teenager, we had an elder in my congregation, like a priest, and he was, like, super buttoned up, really nice guy, family guy, you know, and he was on the podium once every couple weeks giving instructional talks. And he left. He left the religion. And I didn't hear from him for a year or so. And then one of my friends brought in a little newspaper clipping and they picked the guy up running down the main street of my town, just drunk out of his gourd and buck naked and the juxtaposition of who I knew this guy to be. Fast forward one year. Like, you want to talk about the hazard of that off boarding, you know, of that liminal space where you haven't found your footing, you took the brave step to get the fuck out, but you don't know where you're headed or where you're going to land. Like, that's. That's the kind of headspace that. That we're talking about.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Where we can be talking about anyway.

[A]

Yeah, that all of a sudden it's like, it's. It's almost like, you know, B.F. skinner, you know, that idea of letting the person out of the box and all of a sudden, like, wait, where. Where am I? What do I do? Yeah.

[B]

Yep, totally.

[A]

Oh, my God.