David Farrier - Conspiracies, Cults, and Investigating Arise Church

Summary

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Episode: David Farrier – Conspiracies, Cults, and Investigating Arise Church
Release Date: January 14, 2026
Hosts: Lola Blanc & Megan Elizabeth | Guest: David Farrier

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Episode Overview

This episode features a candid and darkly humorous conversation with journalist and filmmaker David Farrier (Tickled, Dark Tourist), who is known for exploring subcultures, conspiracies, and abuses of power—especially within religious groups. The hosts and David dive into conspiracy culture post-COVID, discuss the manipulation at New Zealand’s Arise Church (New Zealand's largest megachurch), and reflect on how groupthink, social pressures, and the search for belonging can nurture both cults and conspiracy movements. Along the way, the discussion branches out into the mechanics of religious manipulation, personal recovery after high-control environments, and even the disturbing evangelism techniques of evangelical “Hell Houses.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. David Farrier’s Path to Investigating the Dark and Unusual

• Background: David explains how his career in New Zealand media (starting 2005) let him pursue odd, dark topics (09:00).

  • Inspired by British documentarian Louis Theroux; admires participatory, non-threatening style (09:32).
  • Emphasizes the disarming power of accents/cultural unfamiliarity when interviewing hostile or secretive subjects (10:22).

• Notable Projects:

  • Tickled: Explored the world of competitive tickling, revealing abuse and homophobia (12:03).
  • Dark Tourist: Netflix show on tourism to morbid or dangerous places. Analysis of those drawn to dark tourism and those monetizing it (13:49).
  • Webworm Newsletter: Focus today on cults, high-control religious groups, and conspiracy movements, especially post-COVID.

“I was just gravitated to do sort of like, do you know Louis Theroux?... My whole brain is like, why don’t I do a similar thing to Louis, but in New Zealand?”
— David Farrier (09:32)

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2. Conspiracies and Their Allure

• Pandemic Surge: David notes how New Zealand, previously seen as rational and reserved, was not immune to QAnon, anti-vax, or anti-5G conspiracies (15:41).
• Similarities to Cults: Conspiratorial thinking draws on people’s need for clear, reassuring answers to a chaotic world—akin to the lure of cultic religion.
  • Social aspects (message boards), puzzle solving, and a sense of community intensify commitment (20:02).
• Leaving Conspiracies: The exit often comes when one’s logic "goes a step too far" and breaks down.
  • Discusses “steel manning” (helping someone verbalize their beliefs to reach internal contradictions) as a respectful strategy for dialog (21:39).

“It’s much easier to go, oh, there’s this giant thing behind the scenes pulling all the strings... then it’s really embarrassing to come out of [conspiracies].”
— David Farrier (18:29)

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3. Arise Church: Investigating a New Zealand Megachurch

What Is Arise? (22:43)

• Once NZ’s biggest megachurch, modeled after Hillsong, targeting youth through modern music, social activities, and college outreach.
• Outwardly apolitical, predominantly white, and seen as benign—escaped critical media scrutiny unlike minority-focused churches.

Patterns of Manipulation and Abuse

• Exploitative Internships: Interns (as young as 17) pressured into unpaid labor, working extreme hours, and tithing despite financial struggle (26:08, 28:51).
• Celebrity-Pastor Culture: Leadership (John Cameron and wife) venerated as near-divine; strict rules—e.g., forbidden to make eye contact with leaders.
• Spiritual Guilt and Control: Members told their self-worth and eternal salvation depended on obedience and service.
• Coverups and Systemic Harms: Reports of financial exploitation and sexual assault cases being buried.
• Aftermath: Farrier’s reporting spurs hundreds of former members to come forward (32:14); external investigation condemns leadership, leading to resignations (56:51). However, the leaders simply restart similar churches in Australia (57:43).

“You had to follow their leader, John Cameron. Like everything he said was... godlike almost. At conferences he’d have his own green room and you weren’t allowed to look him in the eye.”
— David Farrier (28:51)

The Human Cost

• Isolation and Shunning: Those who left were fully ostracized, losing their community, friends, and often any support network (51:28).
• Recovery: Survivors leaving in adulthood struggle to build new identities and basic worldviews from scratch (53:43). Some, desperate for belonging, end up in new controlling groups.

“You lose all your community support. Imagine if you’re like a single mom in there... Suddenly that’s instantly cut off.”
— David Farrier (51:28)

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4. Hell Houses and Evangelical Scare Tactics (34:05)

• Evoking “the fear of Hell” is a timeless and effective tool.
• Farrier describes attending a modern evangelical "Hell House" in California:
  • High production value rooms simulating sins—club scenes, drunk-driving deaths, graphic suicide and drug overdose—and a literal "Hell" finale.
  • Participants shown real violent YouTube clips, then urged by pastors to convert—dozens do.
  • Minimum age is 12; trauma as recruitment strategy.

“There’s demons, there’s people screaming in cages... and the idea being that all those people you saw die in these hideous ways—they went to Hell.”
— David Farrier (36:05)

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5. Broader Reflections on Religion, Recovery, and Capitalism

• Manipulation Checklists: The hosts discuss a church-renunciation checklist, noting its impractical demand for exclusive devotion and constant guilt (42:29).
• Life After High-Control Groups: Building a new worldview, finding non-culty communities, and the risk of “cult-hopping” (54:59).
• Ethics and Selling Out: Lively meta-conversation about the ethics of advertising, capitalism, and compromise for those making a living by exposing exploitation (60:11, 62:44).

“I think the people that get involved in the leadership of these churches are out to make a lot of money and I’ve never seen an instance of it [voluntarily reforming].”
— David Farrier (59:49)

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6. Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On Deprogramming:

  • “It just goes a step too far... as they try and explain in this conspiratorial way, their own explanation is a step too far for them and they start to get stumped.”
    — David Farrier (21:39)

• On Isolation and Shunning:

  • “Your friends in there will stop talking to you because you’re now evil. And so you’re suddenly completely adrift in the world.”
    — David Farrier (51:28)

• On Leadership’s Motivation:

  • “I could never figure out whether he [John Cameron] really believed this stuff or whether it was just a convenient thing... that made him very wealthy and popular.”
    — David Farrier (47:42)

• On the Recovery Journey:

  • “How to construct an identity from scratch as an adult is... just start again now.”
    — David Farrier (53:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• David’s Background and Style: 09:00–13:45
• Tickled & Conspiracy Journalism: 12:03–15:41
• Pandemic Conspiracies in New Zealand: 15:41–18:29
• How People Get Out of Conspiracies: 18:28–22:22
• Entry to Arise Church, the Megachurch Model: 22:43–26:59
• Intern Abuse and Manipulation: 28:51–33:10
• Community Response & Leadership Fallout: 32:14–34:00, 56:51–58:35
• Hell House Explored: 34:05–40:14
• The Cost of Shunning: 51:28–54:03
• Recovery from High-Control Groups: 53:43–56:46
• Future Investigations/First Amendment Auditors: 64:22–67:05

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Tone & Style

The hosts and guest maintain a balance of dark humor, compassion for survivors, and analytical curiosity. The mood is supportive and at times playful, even as the content turns heavy. Insights are delivered with an open, confessional tone.

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Where to Find David Farrier

• Newsletter: Webworm.co
• Podcast: Flightless Bird
• Documentaries: Tickled, Dark Tourist, Mr. Organ (all available on various streaming platforms)

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Conclusion:
David Farrier’s account illuminates the hidden but systemic harms of seemingly mainstream religious organizations and the subtle psychological levers that cults and conspiratorial groupings exploit. The episode closes with a discussion of next investigative topics (First Amendment auditors), the murkiness of ethical purity in a capitalist world, and the ongoing need for survivor-centered storytelling.

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(Summary compiled for listeners seeking an in-depth yet accessible understanding of the episode, major insights, and notable moments, with references to precise timestamps.)

Transcript

[Lola Blanc]

This is exactly right.

[David Ferrier]

What happened to her? The studio that brought you weapons comes a terrifying new vision. What was our daughter doing in the 3,000 year old sarcophagus?

[Lola Blanc]

Lee Cronin's the Mummy only in theaters April 17th.

[David Ferrier]

New trailer online now. Trust me.

[Lola Blanc]

Do you trust me?

[David Ferrier]

Would I ever lead you astray?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Trust me. This is the truth.

[David Ferrier]

The only truth.

[Lola Blanc]

If anybody ever tells you, just trust them, don't. Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two dark tourists who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc. Of course.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And I'm Megan Elizabeth.

[Lola Blanc]

Of course. Question mark.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's a question. Who.

[Lola Blanc]

Who are you really, Megan?

[Megan Elizabeth]

I don't know.

[Lola Blanc]

Today our guest is David Ferrier, journalist and filmmaker known for documentaries like Tickled and the Netflix series Dark Tourist. He'll tell us about some of his work, studying strange subcultures and conspiracy theorists and what he's learned along the way. And then he'll delve into his investigation into Arise Church, the largest megachurch in New Zealand and its former leader, John Cameron.

[Megan Elizabeth]

He'll explain how his interviews with ex members revealed the church's systemic patterns of demanding unpaid internships with extreme work hours that led to multiple members having mental breakdowns and. And the financial exploitation and sexual assault coverups that occurred. We'll learn how it all got exposed and what became of the church afterwards.

[Lola Blanc]

Plus a couple of tangents, including one about Hell House, the evangelical run haunted house that simulates hell to scare you into joining. There's so much to get into and we have to go there. We will talk more about it, but before we do, Megan, what's your cultiest thing of the week?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Well, my cultiest thing this week is actually kind of pro cults.

[Lola Blanc]

Okay, go on.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Which growing up, you know, felt a little sad, but as an adult, I've just kind of kept it. And reflecting on this past holiday season, I realize I kind of love it.

[Lola Blanc]

Why?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Because I can go to some a few Christmas parties. I accidentally missed yours, actually. You did? But I can like go to some Christmas parties, get a few things, you know, here and there, enjoy lights and stuff. But like, I don't have to buy my family Christmas gifts.

[Lola Blanc]

That's true.

[Megan Elizabeth]

They don't have to buy me Christmas gifts. I just tell my friends, don't get me a Christmas gift, I don't want it. I don't care. Just the financial strain people go through for Christmas actually breaks my heart. So I've bowed out of it. Thank you two by twos, for giving me One perk in life, which is that I don't have to buy what essentially is a car every year for people.

[Lola Blanc]

I think I forgot you were like Jehovah's Witnesses. Like, you just didn't do Christmas.

[Megan Elizabeth]

No Christmas, no Easter. We were allowed to do holidays that didn't have to do with Jesus. Like, we had birthdays and stuff. But okay, the two by twos would say every day is Jesus's birthday and we celebrate him every day. But oddly I was allowed. And I don't know if this was for most people in the two by twos, but I was allowed to celebrate Halloween. Thank gosh.

[David Ferrier]

Gosh. Thank God.

[Lola Blanc]

Thank gosh.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And you know, like, a lot of people who weren't even that Christian weren't allowed to deliver Halloween. I don't know. I was allowed to read Harry Potter. I was allowed to dress like a witch.

[Lola Blanc]

And like, that's so surprising.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's so strange. But like, as soon as Christmas rolled around, it was like, no, no to that.

[Lola Blanc]

Well, I love that for you.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Thanks. I am free from the financial burden of Christmas. And that, my friend, is gift enough for me.

[Lola Blanc]

Wow, it's beautiful.

[Megan Elizabeth]

What about you? What's your cultiest thing?

[Lola Blanc]

Well, I learned about a cult that I did not know about. I mean, and tell me if I'm wrong and just completely erase this from my memory. Have we talked about the Summum cult in Utah?

[Megan Elizabeth]

No.

[Lola Blanc]

Okay. I was at a party, randomly walked by some girl and I hear her saying, do you know what the Zizians are? To someone else. And I stopped and interrupted and was like, oh, the Zissy, that cult killed people. And then we started talking about cults. And she was like, what about the Summum? You guys know about that? And I was like, well, I don't know what that is. And it's this new religious movement in Salt Lake that has a fucking pyramid because. Okay, let me, let me give you an overview here. It began in 1975. The owner, of course, had an encounter with beings he described as sama individuals, blah, blah, blah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

They gave him individual.

[Lola Blanc]

No idea. But I think it's like an alien or an angel or whatever. The, like a mystical being.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Those are the same thing. Okay, got you.

[Lola Blanc]

So they're advanced beings is what they are. So he founded the Summum in order to share this gift with others. And they began selling wine. They call the Wine Nectar Publications. But one of the like, primary tenants of this group is mummification. And he himself was mummified by the group. He died in 2008. His body is encased inside a bronze mummiform casket that's covered in gold and stands inside the group's pyramid. If you go on their website, it offers mummification as an option for your loved one. And I'm going to read some of the offerings to you right now. A very thorough, detailed, yet gentle process that allows one to be memorialized for eternity. Mummification is the only form of permanent preservation. The rights of mummification of transference allow you to leave this life in as beautiful a manner as possible. Blah, blah, blah. A synthesis of medical technology, modern chemistry, and esoteric art. Oh. They have a rights reserved symbol after what they've termed modern mummification. And the current costs for a human is $67,000. Within the continental US you have the option of choosing an artistic MoMA form or a capsule mama form. They vary widely in cost, from tens of thousands of dollars to well over a hundred thousand dollars, depending on how elaborate it is.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Why wouldn't you just get yourself taxidermied?

[Lola Blanc]

Right. I've thought about that. I feel like that'd be a fun way to go.

[Megan Elizabeth]

That's like, what, $600.

[Lola Blanc]

Okay. Cost effective.

[David Ferrier]

Okay.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Why do they think the mummification process matters? It's like a spiritual, like, kind of Egyptian thought process.

[Lola Blanc]

I don't know.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Well, this is an episode.

[Lola Blanc]

It seems like. Yeah, they just, like, that's what they. That's what the beings told them, and that's what they landed on. And so you can drink their wine or you can purchase their mummification services, and that is how they are surviving as a group.

[Megan Elizabeth]

You know what? I'm gonna start with the wine. Even though I'm sober.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, I'm gonna start with the mummification. What do you mean? But I think you can, like, visit and, like, see the pyramid. I'm like, how, as a person, partially from Utah, did I not know this existed? This is like a place. It's in Salt Lake.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I think we should go visit it.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, my God. Road trip.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, road trip. I think that should be one of our first YouTubes.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, our first YouTube. Let's do it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

We're.

[Lola Blanc]

We're gonna do YouTube, you guys. It's gonna happen.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, let's do that. And then I just wanted to shout out, are. Are you done talking about this pyramid or.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, I'm so done talking about this pyramid.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I just wanted to say that David's a part of something that I've been really interested in. It started last year. A few. Two by Twos. I know talked at it. It's the D cult conference in New Zealand. It's the first cult awareness summit in the region, bringing together survivors and researchers. So, you know, New Zealand's pretty isolated. It's pretty easy for some cults to gain a lot of traction there because isolation is one of the first things cults breed off of. So David, so cool. He's part of it. He's such an interesting dude and.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. What a. What a life. What a career.

[Megan Elizabeth]

What a career.

[Lola Blanc]

Fascinating.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I'm excited for y' all to hear him. Should we jump in with them?

[Lola Blanc]

Let's jump on in. Welcome David Ferrier to trust me in person.

[David Ferrier]

Thank you. It's nice to be here.

[Lola Blanc]

Nice to have you here.

[David Ferrier]

I love your space. I love your bookshelf. I love the plants.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh my God. Thank you so much. We are not responsible for most of those things, but just take credit for it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

The one thing he didn't say was the people.

[David Ferrier]

So I'm about to learn about the people. You know, I don't want to go too soon.

[Megan Elizabeth]

We are responsible for outfits. Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Okay. You have so much rich career history. We have to talk a little bit about that. How did you start doing journalism on weird dark shit?

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, it started in, as you can tell from the accent, it started in New Zealand probably in about 2005 when I graduated from journalism school. And I was super lucky in that, like, New Zealand is so small. We have 5 million people. So we only have two newsrooms. You can really work in television. And I ended up in one of those. And I ended up with basically the job of filling in the sort of late news, arts and entertainment slot, which is basically means I could do a two minute story on whatever I wanted.

[Lola Blanc]

Wow.

[David Ferrier]

And so I just gravitated down to sort of like, do you know Louis Thoreau? Do you know his work?

[Lola Blanc]

Louis Theroux?

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. So I obsessively watch his stuff around this time. And so my whole brain is like, yeah, why don't I do a similar thing to Louis? But in New Zealand. And so I gravitated to those kind of stories.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Who is Louis? Tell me about.

[David Ferrier]

He's like British me. He's. He's much better. I'm not being modest. He's really good at what he does. And he makes these documentaries where he's very. He's in the scene and he's. When he started doing his work, there was this idea in documentary that he had to be this sort of God's eye view and not be too like participatory in it. Whereas he would get involved. So he would go to a swingers party to learn about swingers and he would join in. Or he'd learn about porn stars in LA and he'd go and audition to be a porn star.

[Lola Blanc]

He visited with the Westboro Baptist Church, recalling.

[David Ferrier]

He was the one that really put Westboro Baptist on the map. Like his documentaries were the ones that put them out there. So I love his work so much and he gets very culty and very niche kind of subjects.

[Lola Blanc]

And he's so cute and non threatening that everyone just takes to him.

[David Ferrier]

That's exactly it. Cause he's got this really soft British voice. And so when he comes to America to do his work, people don't really know what to make of him. And so he can put put forth really offensive, intense questions to a Nazi, say. And they don't know that he's being confrontational. They just think, oh, he's this cute.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Little British man, okay.

[David Ferrier]

Which is kind of what I do in America a little bit as well now. Whereas I think my New Zealand accent, some people don't know what to do with it. And it can be really helpful when you're in confrontational situations. So Fast forward to 2014. I'd been in the newsroom for maybe almost a decade and I left to make my first feature documentary, Tickles. And that was kind of where I went. Really leaned into that Louis way of just trying to be never confrontational, but just curious. And I was up against some sort of pretty horrific Americans. And I was in their faces, but I was doing it in a very gentle way. And that kind of made the whole documentary work.

[Lola Blanc]

And that was about.

[Megan Elizabeth]

My ex boyfriend was obsessed with that documentary.

[Lola Blanc]

Everybody was, yeah, yeah. It was like.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I mean, I liked it, it was great. But like he was obsessed with.

[David Ferrier]

That was why the relationship was weird.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I was like, join Tickle.

[Lola Blanc]

Like it was about competitive tickling, right? For people who kind of. It was, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Ferrier]

It was essentially. I noticed it was a very. It's a very strange story to explain, but essentially young men from all around the world were being flown to Los Angeles. So there were New Zealanders being flown in and they would take part in competitive endurance tickling. So they were all in Adidas sports where they'd tie each other down and they would tickle. And the whole thing was marketed as this sort of sport. And I reached out from New Zealand going, I'd love to do a little story on this interesting thing. Because New Zealanders are Taking part. And really quickly I got a response. We will never deal with a homosexual journalist. And so that obviously Googled me, seeing that I was in a relationship with a man at the time and were like. And so I was like, this is the gayest shit I've ever seen in my life. Like, what? And so I was like, oh, there's something weird going on. It's not just a tickling competition. And so I started sort of pushing deeper in. And then about a month into that, they said, we're flying two lawyers from New York to New Zealand to talk with you about why you shouldn't do this documentary.

[Lola Blanc]

Wow.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Two straight lawyers.

[David Ferrier]

Two straight. You're very straight. Very straight. One of them did seem quite gay, actually, but I didn't bring that up. So that started this really insane journey that ended up with me coming to America with my tiny little crew and having some really intense. You know, this movie got to be about not just tickling, it goes, like, quite dark. And again, that Louis Theroux thing of just trying to be disarming and just being like, hey, this seems like a really abusive situation happening right now. And sort of doing it in a very low key way that seemed to work for the tone we ended up with.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

And so then you created a series where you got to do more of that.

[David Ferrier]

I did, yeah. So out of that, out of Tickled made Dark Tourists for Netflix, which was basically a show looking at dark tourism, where the whole concept of dark tourism being instead of going on a beautiful holiday somewhere to a resort, people get a kick out of going somewhere where something awful has happened. So they might go to, you know, Chernobyl, or they might go to somewhere where there's been some horrific massacre, or we ended up in a radioactive zone in Japan. And so we were looking at the types of people attracted to these places and also the types of people monetizing these tragedies to make a tourist attraction out of them. And so that was an eight part show, which was insane to make, and I feel incredibly lucky to have made it. And then from there, I made another documentary about a strange kind of unusual man called Michael Organ in New Zealand. And I made that for Netflix. And that's another kind of story about a man who's kind of pulling the strings, which is very similar to what Tickled was.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yes.

[David Ferrier]

And now I make a podcast called Flightless Bird about the weird parts of America. And when I'm not doing that, I write an investigative journalism newsletter which kind of delves into stuff that I feel you guys talk a lot about, which is a lot of culty, mainly within religion and specifically within Christianity, because that was my background. I grew up in the church. And so in Webrahim I started exploring some sort of high control religions, specifically in New Zealand, because those churches mimicked a lot of American models. There was a lot of crossover, I think. And so my readership on Webworm is, I'd say half New Zealand, half American.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, interesting.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

You have written so much about conspiracy theories. I clicked on that sort of page you have of all of the articles. Yeah, there were so many.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, that's the other thing. That's right before sort of high control religions, Webworm was very focused on conspiracy content. And that's because I was in New Zealand when Covid hit and New Zealand took a very lockdown approach. So our government was very like, let's not let Covid in. Let's try and keep this away for as long as possible and save as many lives as possible. And when that happened, a bunch of little factions sort of popped up in New Zealand of really extreme, what we saw the world over, but really extreme skepticism towards vaccines. And then we saw things like QANON creep into New Zealand. People were attacking 5G cell towers because they thought that Covid was combining with 5G somehow magically, and that was the vector. So I got really intrigued by looking at why are New Zealanders, who are these really seen as quite rational sort of down to earth people? Why are we getting. No offense to Americans, but why are.

[Megan Elizabeth]

We going is like that shit, we're getting Americanized.

[David Ferrier]

Why are we getting Americanized? And so I was really curious about that.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Interesting.

[Lola Blanc]

What is it in you, like what draws you to these topics, do you think?

[David Ferrier]

I think I. So I grew up in quite a, like a very. Not very, like a reasonably conservative kind of Christian home. So I had a very sheltered upbringing. So I wasn't really exposed to like a lot of secular music. And it was a very kind of black and white world. And so when I went to university to study journalism, I just. It's that typical thing, you go to university and you discover there's this whole other world out there.

[Megan Elizabeth]

You heard a rock song for the first time.

[David Ferrier]

Oh, kind of, yeah. To be honest, kind of. It was a bit like that. And I was like, oh my God, there's this whole other world. And I think instead of just sort of dabbling, I sort of combine that with my interest in journalism of being like, this is an amazing way to tell stories about these really niche areas of society, and I get to selfishly dabble in those and sort of see what they're all about. I found that really fun. I love the idea of bringing those things to a screen in New Zealand. And then that just kind of snowballed into almost everything I do, which is. Yeah, just treating everything with curiosity. And every day I kind of can't believe. I mean, you have the same thing with what you do. It's like you can't believe what you're seeing in front of you.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

So how is this happening? Like, why is it happening? And I just kind of want to get to the bottom of all of that stuff.

[Lola Blanc]

Totally. Well, we want to ask you about Arise Church, but I just feel because there's so much conspiracy content on your website, like, do you have any particular thoughts on how to engage with conspiracy theorists or why or how it happens?

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, that's a big question.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

I think that's the stuff we're all kind of trying to grapple with. And I think. I think at its most simple, like, people that are drawn into these conspiracy kind of rabbit holes, I see it as in a very similar way to people that are drawn into certain religions. It's a simple answer to something that's incredibly complicated. And I think that's. I feel like that's an idea that we've sort of gotten a bit more used to now since the pandemic. And I think a lot of people have sort of taken more interest in going, why are people talking about these crazy things? And I think it really is that simple. I think it's just people look at this very scary, confusing world, and it's much easier to go, oh, there's this giant thing behind the scenes pulling all the strings. And that is an explanation that kind of lets you off the hook for how crazy the world is. And then I think once you go down that road, it's a bit like religion, where once you're kind of locked into it, it's really hard to get yourself out of it. Cause to get yourself out of it, you've got to admit that maybe some of my ideas were not correct. And that's really embarrassing. Yeah, like, it's really embarrassing to come out of that.

[Megan Elizabeth]

We had an ex QANON member. Was he from New Zealand?

[David Ferrier]

Oh, God.

[Lola Blanc]

He might have been Jatarth.

[David Ferrier]

Let's just say Australia. Let's put it on. Australia.

[Lola Blanc]

It might have been Australia.

[David Ferrier]

Perhaps.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I can't remember. Yeah, but he, you know, it was something he really bonded with his father over. So Then to say, oh, I don't believe this anymore, was like a fraction in that relationship that he, at the time of our interview, was not able to repair.

[David Ferrier]

So, yeah, so he's, like, lost his father and exiting from that, which is, like, horrific. That stuff.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Horrible.

[David Ferrier]

And people are. It is also that thing of. It is a social thing. I think, especially during the pandemic, people found themselves on message boards and in group chats. And it was something we have all got this common language to talk about. And also, I think it's this idea that you're solving a puzzle. Cause once you go down a conspiracy rabbit hole, it's like you're being a detective and you're trying to, like, solve the. And you're swapping information. It's so exciting.

[Lola Blanc]

It seems exciting to me.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, no, completely.

[Lola Blanc]

How do you solve the, like, all of the world's problems? With one easy answer, which ends up being actually many complicated answers because of the mental gymnastics that you have to do. But, like, seems fun.

[David Ferrier]

Speaking about mental gymnastics, I feel like the way I've noticed people get out of it mainly, you know, often it's just coming to these conclusions on your own. And what it feels like to me, with people I've observed sort of snapping out of it, is the logic just goes a step too far. Like, it literally gets a bit too crazy. And if one bit of information gets a bit too intense, the rest of that kind of structure can shatter. And so there's a technique that I was told sort of if you've got a friend or a loved one that's deep down the rabbit hole, instead of just sort of arguing with them endlessly. I believe I might be wrong on this. I think the term is like steel manning. And so instead of, like, trying to, like, poke holes in their argument, right, you basically just. You just ask some questions.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Like, I think it's straw manning.

[David Ferrier]

That's the usual other one.

[Lola Blanc]

And that's a different thing.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Steel manning is like, building up their argument.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yes.

[David Ferrier]

You lean into it and you go, oh, okay, so 9, 11, you know. You know, so how were the bombs planted in the building? You know, the steel beam. You just get them to explain things more and more. And the more people explain it, eventually they might get to a point where as they try and explain this thing in this conspiratorial way, their own explanation is a step too far for them and they start to kind of like, get stumped.

[Lola Blanc]

It is interesting how once something is verbalized, it becomes more real in a way that completely when it's just in your head, it seems more plausible.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. Oh, completely. 100%. And I think you can have things buzzing around in your head that seem logical. You try and explain it to someone, and that's where you see your argument starting to fall over.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And that's therapy.

[Lola Blanc]

That's my journal.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's journaling. It's a journaling rule to be doing.

[Lola Blanc]

But look at what I've written. I'm like, I am kidding myself. This is ridiculous.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, yeah, totally.

[Lola Blanc]

Well, love that insight. Thank you.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, that's a good one.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. So tell us how you came to investigate Arise Church.

[David Ferrier]

So Arise is New Zealand's or was New Zealand's biggest megachurch. So you've got Hillsong here in America. That was. Do you know Hillsong?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, yeah.

[David Ferrier]

It's a big one. It's less big now. It's kind of fracturing. But Hillsong was actually founded by. Originally by a New Zealander. And so the model of Hillsong was a New Zealand idea, got exported to America, kind of came back to New Zealand. And so in New Zealand, we have a bunch of these big charismatic Pentecostal churches. And they largely seem pretty, like, not very offensive from the outside. They look very like the congregation's families. It's a lot of white people. It's very generic, and they're not particularly loud about anything politically. They're just getting on with what they do. And so in New Zealand, there's a few churches that do get criticized. One of them is an incredibly culty church called Destiny Church, which is. It's largely not white. So it's a large Mori population in there and Pacific population. And so that church sort of cause they're loud and because they stand out and they're not generically white, they get criticized by the media all the time for some of their incredibly. The leadership is incredibly manipulative and awful. And so while that criticism was happening, I was looking at these other churches that were much bigger, that we're getting zero criticism. And I sort of became curious about what those churches were doing and whether their behavior was like Hillsong. And so I started talking to ex members and certainly interns that had volunteered and given that time and just found this incredibly manipulative system where the leaders of that church was the leader, John Cameron and his wife, they were so manipulative and they had church members so under their fingers that people felt they couldn't leave. The interns were burning out and giving so much of their time. There were sexual assault Allegations just being swept under the carpet. All the stuff that you probably, if you've looked at these churches, you're kind of like, oh, yeah, of course. But at the time in New Zealand, three years ago, it was just completely unknown. And so when I started writing about that, the whole thing kind of blew up and it became a big story in New Zealand. It was on the 6 o' clock news, was in all our newspapers as more and more interns came out going, yeah, that we had a horrific time here and this was awful. And it led to the resignation of the leadership. John Cameron left, which was great. And that church is fractured. But of course, what has happened literally in the last six months is those leaders have now opened up churches across the ditch in Australia and they're using the same model just to start again, which is, I feel like something we see in so many of these places. Right. Again and again.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And what is the model? Is it like a lot of live music?

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, so it's Happy Clappy, very modern. They have a really slick band. So you walk into this church and they're very targeted at youth and so they do a lot of their recruitment at university open days. They'll get students who are maybe a bit like lost and looking for a community and they'll say, hey, we're having like a big pizza night this night down the road. Come and join in. And so they.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I've joined it. Yep, there's pizza there.

[David Ferrier]

Yep. So it's that thing, it's like, oh, yeah, I'll do this thing. It seems cool and fun. And so they. They have a huge turnover, but they basically get young people in. They use them to staff all of their church services and do all the hard work for no money. And they're just getting volume in, just more and more people. And then, of course, pressuring them to tithe 10%. Cause that's what the Bible says, you know, and these are students that have student loans and can't afford it. Some of them stay and keep tithing for years and get taken into church leadership. And I would see it as a slow brainwashing, essentially, that happens over time. And so some of the people I spoke to had been at Arise for almost two decades and they just left and were like, this is just my whole life was this place and I don't know what I am without it.

[Lola Blanc]

Did you write that not only were they unpaid, but they were paying separate from the tithing as well?

[David Ferrier]

Some of them were paying for, like, leadership courses within the church. So they're like paying in for that.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I hate, I hate, I hate it.

[David Ferrier]

It's a whole. Yeah, it was just a whole built in system that no journalists in New Zealand had really looked at before. It was, you know, very critical of these other smaller churches that were like much, they stood out because they were minorities that were there. And so, you know, the media always tends to focus on those kinds of people. Whereas this white, seemingly perfect place was never touched. And it was much worse in much higher volumes than the other churches that were typically criticized.

[Megan Elizabeth]

This is just an aside.

[David Ferrier]

I love asides.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Is it harder to get into these communities in New Zealand where you can't use the accent as like a charming?

[David Ferrier]

The trouble I have in New Zealand is because it's so small and because I've been in the media for a long time, people sort of know who I am.

[Lola Blanc]

Right, right, right.

[David Ferrier]

And so, yeah, walking into these churches becomes more difficult because people are going to close up. So with my reporting into Arise, it was mostly talking to former members, meeting up with them, not actually going into the church itself, but really talking to people that had been in there or that were still in there and thinking of leaving and getting the story out of them that way.

[Lola Blanc]

Well, tell us a little bit more about the internships because, you know, most churches I know have like volunteering that some people are doing, but rarely do I hear about this many people having like mental breakdowns due to the amount of time they're spending. Can you talk about that?

[David Ferrier]

It was just, they really, you know, what they had over these young people, sort of, you know, 17, 18, 19, 20 years old, is that they had convinced them that this church was gonna get them into heaven and it was gonna give them a better life. And to have the best life you could have, you had to follow their leader, John Cameron. Like everything he said was, you know, godlike almost, you know, and at conferences he'd have his own green room and you weren't allowed to look him in the eye. Everything was like very insanely structured. So he almost had the celebrity status within the church, which in New Zealand is so unusual because we're so low key. We don't really do celebrity. We have some famous rugby players maybe, but people don't really care otherwise. And so the fact he had that power over them was kind of amazing. And then when you're told by your church that the way to serve God and to make God happy is to give your Monday night and your Tuesday night and your Wednesday night and you're setting up before services on a Sunday and after, into the night. And when conferences are coming, you've got to be there for the whole four days. You just. You do it. And these were kids who. You know what it's like being a teenager. Life is kind of busy. You've got school and sport and your personal stuff, and then suddenly this church comes in and takes over most of your life. And you're trying to hold down a job to pay for your school fees, but then you're also doing all this stuff for the church for free. People were just hitting burnout. They were exhausted physically and mentally. And then add to that, various kind of coercive sort of things were being run behind the scenes. People just cracked. And a lot of them cracked.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It seems like how they cracked, too was seen as almost godly. You know, like somebody bursts into tears and it's like, oh, you're having a release kind of.

[David Ferrier]

And if you're not. And, you know, if people were breaking down as well and starting to complain, the thought was, no, like, you've gotta, like, don't be weak for God. You have to, like, push through this. And if you push through this, that's when you know you're holy and, like, God loves you. So it was all this kind of spiritual manipulation to get these kids just doing so much work. And I should say, these churches had campuses all over New Zealand. So, you know, there was a really big one in all the main centers and then smaller ones in smaller towns. So it was a really big network and a lot of people involved.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, because you went public with some initial stories at first, and then stories were flooding in.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Right.

[David Ferrier]

It was crazy. Yeah. I did my first story where I'd spoken to a few people, and my whole idea was like, this is the biggest church in New Zealand you haven't heard of. And they're doing some incredibly dicey things. And since I published that on Webworm, I just started. Yet the floodgates opened. So many people started emailing in with stories. It was almost like they'd been waiting to have a vector to basically tell their story. And so I was getting these, you know, when people are very passionate, they will. They will write for a long amount of time. And so I was getting these, you know, two, three, four page emails from people just outlining their year at the church, or some of them had been there for 10 years and just these stories, and they all started following the same kind of pattern. I've got a Google Doc of all of these, and it's 450 pages long, just to people.

[Lola Blanc]

Wow.

[David Ferrier]

Riding in with their experiences. And so I started feeding some of them into my other reporting. And of course, you know, the church just closes ranks. And that's when I really got to see how these places operate in this mega church structure where there's no real accountability from the leadership. It operates purely to protect the people at the top. And, you know, they ended up commissioning an external report to look at the culture. And when that report came back incredibly negatively because they started talking to the sorts of people that were talking to me, the church then attempted to bury it. So they buried their own report they'd commissioned. I ended up leaking that report, which was full of more horrific information. The church didn't like that very much. And then they ended up taking legal action against the person they'd hired to write that report. And so they ended up being out of pocket, I think about 10 or $20,000, and had to do a fundraiser to make the money back.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, my God.

[David Ferrier]

So it's just every level of arise church was just horrific. And I guess the overriding thing I kind of took from it is that these churches who harm individuals at the church, they justify it because they are there to bring forth the kingdom of God. Like they have a higher purpose. And so what if Sophie and Mark are complaining about this thing at this church? If we have saved 20 people that night who have come in, you know, because they're going to heaven for forever, we've saved them from hell and so that becomes the important thing. So someone moaning about sexual assault from a youth leader or someone saying, I've almost had a breakdown. No. Yeah. But stop complaining because this is way more important. Suck it up for the cause.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Saving souls.

[David Ferrier]

Saving souls, yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

When you believe you're saving souls, everything will seem petty comparatively, completely.

[David Ferrier]

I mean, this is. I'm gonna do a tangent now, but have you heard about hell houses? Do you know what these are?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Are these the Christian haunted houses?

[David Ferrier]

Yes.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, my God.

[David Ferrier]

Wait, what? Yes. So I knew about this back in New Zealand that these were a thing that existed. I didn't think they were running them anymore, but I went to one in. I'm going to mispronounce this. Whittier. It's between LA City and Orange County.

[Lola Blanc]

Whittier.

[David Ferrier]

Whittier. Sorry, I answered that. Whittier. So a Christian hell house is essentially because Christians aren't allowed to celebrate Halloween because it's evil.

[Lola Blanc]

Right.

[David Ferrier]

Evil spirits will escape and haunt you or whatever. So Halloween is off. So what some Christian churches do, especially sort of the more Conservative, Pentecostal, evangelical ones. They'll put on a hell house. And that is essentially, it's marketed as a normal haunt. So secular Joe blogs will come in going, oh, what is this thing that's popped up in my neighborhood? That sounds really scary. But when you get in there, what it is, it's a whole lot of really graphic and really high production values of youth doing sinful things. And so when you walk in, there's a club. You walk into a club and I walk in, it's beautiful. There's a bar set up, this beautiful woman and hot men coming out to me, offering me drinks. And I'm like. And you walk through that room. So you're like, okay. You're like, I just drink. People are drinking. This sounds amazing. Yeah, let me stay here. The next room. Horrific drink driving, car crash. There's like a kid's got his head split open, he's screaming. The next room, you know, I'll summarize as a heroin drug room. So a lot of people are shooting up.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, my God.

[David Ferrier]

Some of them are overdosing on the floor. You walk into a domestic violence room. Women are getting beaten by, I suppose, their partners. There's an OnlyFans room, a sex workers room. And it sounds so silly, but the production values are really high. They are really shocking.

[Lola Blanc]

The actors are good.

[David Ferrier]

The actors are doing a. It's a suicide room. Someone shoots themselves in the head.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, my God.

[David Ferrier]

Someone else has got open wounds on their arm and they've got a knife in the bathtub. The idea being you walk through all these scenarios and then you end up in hell, which is a very intense room full of demons. And it's this giant. It's like a big hall that sort of looks like rock. It's like you're in a cave. There's demons, there's people screaming in cages. The soundtrack's really loud. And the idea being that all those people that you saw die in these hideous ways. They weren't saved. And so they all died horribly and they went to hell.

[Lola Blanc]

Wow.

[David Ferrier]

And then you emerge into this big auditorium. We were showing YouTube footage and news clips of real deaths. So there was five minutes of suicides, five minutes of murder, five minutes of drug overdoses. And then a pastor comes out and he's like, hey, we showed you those clips just to show you everything in the hell house happens. Only way you could drive home tonight, die on the street in a car crash. And you'll be going straight to hell if you're not saved. So come up the front.

[Lola Blanc]

Wow.

[David Ferrier]

I would say about between 50 and 70 people went up from my group that had just gone through the Hell House. Arms up, got converted, got led off to a corner.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Really.

[David Ferrier]

I couldn't believe it. It works and it's huge. And I would say there'd probably be about a thousand people a night going through in different groups. So I'm just rambling on about how.

[Lola Blanc]

Propaganda tool.

[Megan Elizabeth]

How much is it?

[David Ferrier]

It was $12.75 to get in.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, that's cheap.

[David Ferrier]

I bought two tickets because I hoped a friend would go with me. Or my friends were like, we're not going to.

[Lola Blanc]

That I would have come with you.

[David Ferrier]

That's terrible. Next time you're both coming with me.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

And if you go in as an outsider and you know what to expect, you know, it's fascinating. But you know, I should also say 12 and up is the age limit. So there were kids going through, seeing this stuff. And again, it works like you've put the fear of hell in someone and they will follow along. Like that old fashioned thing works.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh my God. Like the cult that I grew up in, the two by twos is just. There's no real doctrine. It's just don't go to hell. Cause hell is so scary. Like it's just all that we learn about is hell, essentially.

[David Ferrier]

Cause I grew up in a. I had a really great family life. But hell was certainly what my church sort of taught us. And so I'm this. I thought that hell until I was about 20 was a real place. And so the Hell House was surreal because by the time we got to Hell, I was like, oh, this is what I actually pictured this place to be.

[Megan Elizabeth]

As you described it. I was like, precisely.

[David Ferrier]

I should also say the two by twos I believe are in New Zealand.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, there's like a PM and there's a.

[David Ferrier]

There's a. We've got a member of Parliament who is a member.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yes.

[David Ferrier]

And that was a big story from, I believe last year.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

I didn't realize it had spread out that far.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh yeah. It's everywhere.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. Yeah. And you just want it to. It's like you have this thing and you just want it to collapse. Right. You just want to pull everyone out.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yes.

[David Ferrier]

But it just keeps dragging them in.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Well, these systems are perfectly created to.

[David Ferrier]

Keep repeating and because if you leave Hell.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Hell. Yeah. I mean, hell is the period. Period hell.

[David Ferrier]

Is that it?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, that's it.

[David Ferrier]

And again, real place, physical place that you go for all eternity. Not good.

[Lola Blanc]

I feel so blessed that I didn't grow up with hell mythology.

[David Ferrier]

You had none of it.

[Lola Blanc]

Because I was Mormon and Mormons have a different conception of hell.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. My hormones are more chill as far as hell goes.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. Not about other things.

[David Ferrier]

You've got other stuff. Yeah, You've definitely got other stuff. Own weird traumas from this stuff.

[Lola Blanc]

It's the craziest Hell house sounds like the museum of psychiatry for Scient. Like a. Ostensibly a tourist attraction.

[David Ferrier]

Totally. It tricks you.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

And. And obviously there were some church people that were in the Hell house because I said I listened to some of the conversations. Some of them knew. But there were definitely some people entering that place that had no idea it was a religious thing. Because on the outside there's no crosses or Jesus stuff. It's just like some skeletons.

[Lola Blanc]

Is it up all year?

[David Ferrier]

No, it's just around Halloween. I'll send you the info because you should go. You should do an episode around it because it is wild.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, we should do. We should bring like a recorder or something.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. No photography. We're not allowed. I'm sure it's very element secret. Take a little secret in.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, that's illegal.

[David Ferrier]

Just do it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Do it.

[Lola Blanc]

I think this is a two party consent stage.

[David Ferrier]

It is. You're right. That's what I found out in Tickled. Is that recording? You have to have both parties. Very annoying when you're trying to make a documentary.

[Lola Blanc]

It's weird that there are states where only one party needs to consent.

[David Ferrier]

In New Zealand, um, it's a one party system and if you're. You can be the one party. So if we're in New Zealand.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I love New Zealand.

[David Ferrier]

I could meet up with either of you and be secretly recording because I know I'm recording completely legal.

[Lola Blanc]

So if anyone present knows that recording is happening, it's legal no matter what. It's so crazy to me.

[David Ferrier]

It's really dicey, especially with the advent of.

[Lola Blanc]

Did you guys see this doja cat ad for the meta glasses?

[David Ferrier]

No. Have they done an ad with them?

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

I like her. That's so.

[Lola Blanc]

I like her so much. I was so bummed. And the ad is just her like riding around on her bicycle with these meta glasses looking cute. And it's like. You realize this is an ad for a surveillance state.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Right? Like this is not a good thing.

[David Ferrier]

Also I always look at. I'm just, you know, they don't need. She doesn't need the money.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

And if you're going to get them, get the money for something else. It would be a lot of money though, wouldn't it?

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, it would be a lot of money.

[David Ferrier]

So much money.

[Lola Blanc]

Trying to get a celebrity. Absolutely.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

But it's depressing.

[David Ferrier]

I just read there's some sort of suggestion security software that's coming out now which automatically stops the recording in someone's glasses if they're in the room. Because they're having problems now with people wearing these glasses and recording in massage parlors and intimate moments.

[Lola Blanc]

Of course they are. Because how would that not be what it's used for?

[David Ferrier]

Exactly. Humans can be the worst.

[Lola Blanc]

We suck.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. Any new technology will use it for something awful.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, pretty much.

[David Ferrier]

That's why, of course, ChatGPT was always going to end up having an adults only version which is just horny. ChatGPT, you know, that's always going to be the end game of all of.

[Lola Blanc]

This stuff that's the least harmful. I mean there are a lot worse things happening.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

But anyway, back to the church, back.

[Megan Elizabeth]

To another horrible person.

[Lola Blanc]

Back to other horrible things. So you posted on your website a checklist of things for members to renounce if they had become more important to them than God.

[David Ferrier]

Oh wow.

[Lola Blanc]

And I'm going to read some of this list. Okay. Here's what it says as the Holy Spirit brings to your mind the things or people that have become more important to you than the true God, Jesus Christ. I thought God and Jesus were separate, but okay. Use the prayer following the checklist to renounce them. It might be helpful.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Blah, blah, blah.

[Lola Blanc]

Okay. Ambition, food, or any substance, money, possessions, computers, games, software, financial security, rock stars, media, celebrities, thieves. Not sure why those are in the same category. Church activities, sports or physical fitness, fun, pleasure, appearance, image, work, busyness, activity, friends, popularity, spouse, knowledge, children, hobbies, parents.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Honestly, I appreciate them writing it out. I would have appreciated something like this as a two by two child so the OCD wouldn't have completely taken over and I could have just been like none of this.

[Lola Blanc]

Every, everybody is every, every single thing I could possibly enjoy or derive meaning from other than God.

[David Ferrier]

Pretty incredible.

[Lola Blanc]

How do you know when you've crossed the line of it something being more important to you than God?

[David Ferrier]

That's the thing. It's like they play so well with guilt. That's all they want is just to elicit that guilt response. And so you're always just feeling like anything you're thinking about that's any of those things, you're thinking about those too much, then oh no, I'm not godly enough. I must get out my Bible. I must go to Church more. I must volunteer more. It just goes back into all of that. I mean, it's a completely unattainable list of things to not have to think about and to deal with because they're literally the things that make us human on the planet and they're wanting to get rid of all of that stuff.

[Lola Blanc]

You know, so it's just a constant threat.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. And I don't know if y' all experience this dichotomy of, like, being told nothing on earth matters, but then also having to go to school and, like, worrying and getting your homework done.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's, like, so odd and, like, really confusing. Very. Because you have to live. And that includes this list.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. Well, it's that whole thing of, I mean, you're not allowed to be of the world. Right. Like, everything has to be focused on God and yet we're here on Earth.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Right.

[David Ferrier]

But it's almost like it's that idea of, yeah, none of this stuff matters. Which is why. Sort of a sidetrack. But climate change is such a non starter for the conservative Christian movement because in their minds, like, they're out of here. Jesus Christ, we die. And, like, we're going to a much better place. So let's not worry about this environment thinking, who cares? It becomes so damaging. But, yeah, when you're a kid growing up in this stuff, it is super confusing.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

Because it's like, good, do your homework, but at the same time you're being told nothing on earth matters.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. I'm like, I don't want to learn math.

[David Ferrier]

What do we. Yeah. Why are we doing this?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, it's very confusing.

[David Ferrier]

A lot of weird hoops to jump through.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yes.

[Lola Blanc]

I don't really know why I didn't have that. Because we also believed that. Well, prior to my, like, proper cult guy or whatever and mainstream Mormonism, we also believed that the second coming could be at any moment. But also, I feel like there's a strong culture in Mormonism of, like, going to college and having a career and a future. I think maybe I remember people in church being like, it could be tomorrow or it could be a hundred years from now. So you don't really. It didn't necessarily feel like it was definitely gonna happen tomorrow.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I feel like your attitude might have been more like, well, it might be in a hundred years then, whereas mine might be more like, it'll be tomorrow.

[Lola Blanc]

Right.

[David Ferrier]

I was definitely brought up with the it might be tomorrow kind of philosophy because it definitely kept you on your toes.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

And it was also quite. Yeah. Quite a stressful thing.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. And it was very literal. Like, I remember my dad and I were once sitting. I don't know if I've ever told you this, sorry if I had, but my dad and I were once sitting there and we saw the northern lights when we didn't know what they were. And I do not know why we saw them in the state that we're in. And my dad, highly educated man, said, megan, I think Jesus is coming back to the world.

[Lola Blanc]

I've never heard this story.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And I was like, I don't think so, but you're smarter.

[David Ferrier]

Was part of you excited? Or were you instantly like, no, oddly.

[Lola Blanc]

I was like, dad, you were such a skeptical child. It's so impressive to me.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Always.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, it's amazing.

[Megan Elizabeth]

But it was like freaky to me. Cause I knew he said these things, but I was like. I was like, are you okay?

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, my God.

[Megan Elizabeth]

But also, there was another side of me that was like, you should be freaking out right now. This could be Jesus. I don't know.

[Lola Blanc]

Anyway, meanwhile, I'm on the dance floor on December 31, 1999, thinking the world is for sure about to end.

[Megan Elizabeth]

What are you dancing to? Surely not. Prince, 1999.

[Lola Blanc]

I do remember. Oh, fuck. There was one song where my crush wasn't dancing with me. And then he chose to dance with me. And I was like. Like mid dance, he left the girl he was dancing with to dance with me.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And I was like, if this is.

[Lola Blanc]

How the world is so dramatic.

[David Ferrier]

That's like a movie. Yeah. That is amazing. I almost want the world to end at that point.

[Lola Blanc]

It should have.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It should have.

[David Ferrier]

You both ascended to the heavens.

[Lola Blanc]

I know.

[Megan Elizabeth]

You know, the girl gets left behind crying.

[Lola Blanc]

I will remember the song. Cause whenever it comes on, I'm like, oh, that's the song. But I don't remember right now.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Throw it in. The answer.

[David Ferrier]

It's so interesting though, you looking at your dad and kind of not believing it. Because I do wonder with the people including Arise Church and the beliefs of the leaders, how much of them really believe that stuff and how much of them are doing it just to fleece their flock.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I wanted to ask you that.

[David Ferrier]

Cause I still haven't really figured it out, you know, John Cameron, who, you know, left Arise disgraced, now trying to start a new church in Australia. I could never figure out whether he really believed in this stuff or whether it was just a convenient thing for him to have that's made him very wealthy and popular with a certain number of people. And I don't know.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. Sometimes I feel like anyone who starts anything that they're the leader of in any way must be sociopathic, which I know is not true, but only close to it. But whenever, like. Because I feel like this strong desire constantly to like create stuff and to create community and to start projects and then like a few weeks in, I'm always like this. Fudgeing sucks. Like, dealing with people sucks hard. It is so difficult to manage personalities and to make sure there's not conflict and keep the peace.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

And also have it be democratic so everyone feels hurt. Like, it's so fucking difficult. I feel like you have to have sex. Such a particular personality type. Narcissistic to do it, I mean, or just really, really dedicated to the thing.

[Megan Elizabeth]

That it's saving your souls.

[Lola Blanc]

But I suspect it attracts more people who are just like, I want to be on top. I want to be the leader. So it's worth it.

[David Ferrier]

Absolutely. And that's what that was a power structure thing in Arise church. And a lot of these churches Hillsong is that people want to be top dog. And they look at, you know, the leader wandering around in his life with his fancy watch and his cool haircut and cool designer clothes and they all want to be like that. And so again, they'll work their asses off to where they think they will at some point be at that level, when of course, they never will be.

[Lola Blanc]

I was gonna say, do they ever advance?

[David Ferrier]

No, no, barely. It takes years. And if you're a woman, you don't stand a chance. You know, it's that whole thing, you know, it's like such a sexist environment as well.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Racist too.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Ferrier]

Oh, yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Can you talk to us about John's brother Brent?

[David Ferrier]

Oh, Brent. Yeah. So John had a brother, Brent, who. Sorry.

[Lola Blanc]

And Brent, great story. Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

Brent led one of the other Arise churches with his wife. And so Brent was sort of struck me as more of kind of the block headed sort of brother. He was a bit more of a sort of a jock, you know, but more of a sort of a rugby sort of guy. And he was that kind of leader who would be. The story that came out that kind of stood out to me at the time was that he would on away camps, he would like chase members of the church around naked, like as a joke, you know, like a locker room kind of a thing. Yeah, like my dicks out. Ha ha ha. Knocking at their door, trying to get in. Very like blokey, you know, sort of old fashioned sort of things you hear about happening in the.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yep.

[Lola Blanc]

You know, it's one thing if you're in a frat and you are also a teenager.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. It's frat behavior.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

But in from a leader of a church.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

And I don't imagine, you know, I talked to one of the young people that was in the hotel room as Brent was naked, knocking on his door, and he was fucking terrified.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, my God.

[David Ferrier]

You know, and that was treated as lighten up. It was a joke, you know, don't worry about it. And so that was Brent to a T. And he fortunately resigned at the same time that his brother resigned. They both went out the door and arise started collapsing after that. But yeah, Brent was just a blockhead. He was like a blockheaded version of the mat Main guy in John.

[Lola Blanc]

I was reading about how he would give people dead legs, like punch people all the time.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. Loved punching people, love whacking them on the ass, you know, just like blokey, sort of. It's not how. I can't sort of describe it because it's not who I am, but just I imagine locker room kind of football jock behavior, you know. But he's a leader of a church.

[Lola Blanc]

Right.

[David Ferrier]

Which is just so. So bizarre.

[Lola Blanc]

Right. To what extent were people shunned when they would leave?

[David Ferrier]

Oh, completely, yeah. Completely cut out. So that's the thing, right? It's like you get to this point at a rise church and you like, this is, I want to be out. I want to be free of this. You leave, you're cut off from anyone inside. So you hear about this with other religions as well, but it's. Your friends in there will stop talking to you because you're now evil. Because you've left, you lose all your community support. Imagine if you're like a single mom in there or a single dad, and the church was your people you'd call on if you needed help. Suddenly, that's instantly cut off. And so you're suddenly completely adrift in the world. And that was enough for some people to go back to the church again because they just couldn't live without that. Or it was so much of a fear that it stopped people from leaving. And some people that did leave just found I could eventually build a life back. It's just really, really hard to do.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

The people who suffered from, like, mental breakdowns, like, how. I mean, I. This is, I guess, maybe too broad of a question, but I'm just curious about what some of those journeys have looked like after, like, did it lead most of them to leave the church.

[David Ferrier]

It did, Yeah. A lot of the people that fully broke did leave because they just had that breakthrough where it was like, my whole being is attached to this place that's making me feel terrible. And they left and they slowly rebuilt. The difficulty when you're spat out of a church like that in your late 20s, 30s, 40s, some of the hardest stories came from people that were in their 40s. When you're normally. By then you've built up your value system and your worldview and what's important to you when you're suddenly ejected from one of those high control religions. At that point, you're starting from scratch because what, without a Bible, how do I know what's right and wrong? How do I even act in the world? What am I meant to be interested in? It all falls apart at once. And so those were the hardest stories to hear. The people that had been in there for 10, 15 years that were coming out, that were just completely starting and you and trying to. You both know this. You're trying to build up your world again. And that's really, really hard.

[Lola Blanc]

Ugh.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So sad. And breaks my heart.

[Lola Blanc]

How to construct an identity from scratch as an adult is just.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, start again now.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

What does dating look like exactly? What am I meant to watch on tv? What am I consuming? Like, what.

[Lola Blanc]

What do I believe about whether this life means anything completely?

[David Ferrier]

And you've been sort of had your head filled with some very specific ideas of what is evil and what, and suddenly having to reassess all of that moral code again. So, oh, maybe gay people aren't evil. Or like, maybe me being gay isn't a bad thing. Like, everything just starts from scratch.

[Lola Blanc]

I've encountered a number of young women who've exited polygamous communities just through my mom and some of the work that she does. And it's very, very Kimmy Schmidt in most cases. Like, they don't know about anything. They don't know who celebrities are. They don't know what to wear. They don't know what normal sexually. And so there's always this awkward first two years of, like, going way too far, like, in the opposite direction because they just don't know what's normal. Like, I just can't. I feel so lucky that my journey, like, kind of culminated when I was a preteen and then teenager, because starting over in, like, at like 25, 35.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Like, but it's doable and people do it and there's a journey there and there's a story there and there's a lesson there for other people. It's not impossible. And I think one of the cool things that I've heard a lot of people do is take it. And this is like so minimizing it and sounds trite, but like taking a class of something they're interested in is just a quick way to kind of jump into a new community and be interested in something.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. And it is, it's just like not having. Not going out to a bar to meet people, but. No, meet, like have something specific that is a good group of like minded people. And that's. I think that's so important.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. As long as it's not another cult. Because that happens.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Exactly, exactly.

[David Ferrier]

I know. And some people do fall straight into other things.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Very, very common.

[David Ferrier]

So, so hard.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So join a few groups.

[David Ferrier]

Join a few.

[Lola Blanc]

Yes.

[David Ferrier]

Keep an eye. If any of them are a bit culty, then extract yourself, take a different course immediately. But there are so many people. I mean, since I wrote about Arise, I still get emails from people that are discovering those articles now and are sort of going, oh shit. I think my church is doing the same thing. And that is the most rewarding thing because if these articles I wrote can kind of. If people can read them and be seen in them and go, oh, holy shit, this sounds like what's happening to me. And I had no idea this was bad. But this is probably why I'm feeling exhausted and horrible, then it can be the thing that starts to like snap people out of it. That's why I like what your podcast is like the reason you do the show. Right. Like people can listen and sort of go, oh, they can latch onto this thing. It's so important.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Thank you.

[David Ferrier]

Because like you're alone when you're in those places and what you've done is.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So important as well. It's just.

[David Ferrier]

We're all trying, right?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Exactly. At least we're all trying.

[Lola Blanc]

Some of us are trying.

[David Ferrier]

Not all of us. Not all. Not all. It's true.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's true. Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Where did things land with the church ultimately? After all of these came out and.

[David Ferrier]

The investigation went through, so Brent the jock and John the main leader, they both resigned because the report they commissioned was just too damning. And by then they were being talked about on the New Zealand six o' Clock News and they were in all the newspapers. So they left. The church sort of splintered. A lot of people left, which I think is a very positive thing. Some of them renamed to other things and are trying to carry on with the same model. Which is annoying, but just what they do. There was the legal spat between the church and the leader of the report that commissioned to look into how awful the church was that turned into a thing. But where it sits now arises now much smaller in New Zealand, it's much more fractured. It still exists, but I would argue it's not quite as horrific as it was. The downside to it all is what happens a lot of the time, which is what I talked about a little bit earlier. These two leaders have now started their own new churches in Australia. So they've left New Zealand and they're just starting afresh. And that's the thing with a lot of these mega church structures. Other churches will just accept them in. And, you know, anything they have done that is seen as bad, that's reported on, they're seen as martyrs, essentially. And so John and Cameron went to Australia and they were invited into these other churches that were like, oh, you poor people, you've been martyred. Come in here, and they sort of slowly grow in that church. And then they've gone outside of their own churches. And so that's the thing. These churches all just, like, soak each other in. If one gets blown up, there'll be another horrific church that will just happily open them in with open arms.

[Lola Blanc]

Okay, question. Because, like, surely there are instances of churches who, you know, whose leadership was exploiting people and then were like, oh, fuck, we didn't realize we were doing that, or whatever. Like. Or, oh, we shouldn't be doing that.

[David Ferrier]

Totally.

[Lola Blanc]

So what. What do you think the recourse would be? Or, like, are there steps that a community could actually take to repair that?

[David Ferrier]

I think in smaller congregations, you might have a chance where there is more of an even structure between the people that are in the congregation and the people that are serving and then the leadership. I think in these bigger structures, I think there is nothing authentic there. I think it's all built on this system of control. And I think if there aren't people being abused in the church financially, then the church falls apart. And so I think there's no hope for these bigger structures, whether it's a hillsong and a rise. There's other churches in New Zealand, like, Life and Equipes. These churches are just built to exploit people. And so there's no way for it to be fixed unless the whole thing blows up.

[Lola Blanc]

What if the leader's like, all right, I'm cutting my salary to a fifth of what it was, tenth of what it was.

[David Ferrier]

I don't know if it Happens. I've never heard of it happening. I think the people that get involved in the leadership of these churches are out to make a lot of money and I just, I've never seen an instance of it happening. Yeah, I'd love it to. I know, but I just, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, it does seem whenever the leader is being enriched to that extent over the years, the people.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Well, we just saw it with Doja Kat. It's everybody.

[David Ferrier]

People sell out so quickly.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

So, so quickly. I mean, I always wonder like, if I got offered a certain amount of money to do like, wear some meta glasses, am I gonna like turn on my self righteous.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's an important message, you know?

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. I mean, yeah, this is a question I've been grappling with as well. Like in music, whatever. That's not a good story. But basically just like, yeah, when you do need money or you are like, seek, like, it's understandable to make a decision that will help provide some financial security. So how do you know, like, at what point is it so unethical and do we judge people?

[David Ferrier]

Oh, it's fascinating. I often think of it with the podcast I make. We have ads on it. And, you know, I'm always thinking about like, who these companies are and what they're doing. And it's like there's like a, you know, I'll say a hard no to like a gambling ad, for instance. I'm not going to do a read and say, go and buy this alcohol or go and gamble at this online casino. It's a hard no. Then there's other things that are like more in the middle. It's like our supplements. Is that like we have a no supplement rule? Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah. No, I'm wearing that same camp.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

But it's like you also need to pay your staff and keep your. And keep your podcast running.

[Lola Blanc]

Right.

[David Ferrier]

So what are the levels? And then like, what if you have a brand that was good? We had a supplement on our show called AG1, which was made in New Zealand. I thought, this is great. It's like greens.

[Lola Blanc]

I got.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I've been looking into that. Because that guy is.

[Lola Blanc]

Yes.

[David Ferrier]

No, he's. He's a horrific. Yeah. So AG1 is marketed as. It's basically like if you don't eat your vegetables, which is me, I hate vegetables. Have this green powder and it will give you your vegetable intake. So I was like, this is great. I will. This is like, seems like a sane supplement. You know, I used it turns out the New Zealander that founded AG1 had his previous business, had left people completely decimated. He completely ripped them off, left, had this whole other life, a horrific business leader. And there were also questions around how valid the AG1 powder actually was.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yes.

[David Ferrier]

And so that's an advertiser that we. I said, no, we're not going to use this anymore. So it takes like, a couple of months for your deal to run out. And that advertiser goes. But my point being, you can have an advertiser that seems good, and then suddenly you find out their leader's like a massive con man.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Right.

[David Ferrier]

And you're like, oh, God, I can't.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Win here, you know, because capitalism is coercive control, and we're all a part of it, and we're born and we have to take part in it, otherwise you'll die on the side of the street.

[Lola Blanc]

Also, what? Corporations are completely ethical.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's a system of. We're fucked if we.

[Lola Blanc]

Sorry to our advertisers for this episode.

[David Ferrier]

No, it's really hard. I mean. I mean, I started Webworm on a platform called Substack, and I left substack about 3 months ago for another platform because Substack has a really dicey moderation policy around things like having Nazis on the platform and that kind of thing. And so I felt very safe writing Webram and Substack. It was like I'd build up this whole ecosystem and community there, and suddenly it was like, oh, is it ethical to be on this? You know, everything is compromised. And I think we all just have to make the best decisions we can along the way and compromise the best way we can. Sometimes completely ditching some awful things, sometimes trying to have a relationship with it where it works and the good offsets the bad.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yep. Yeah.

[David Ferrier]

I can't remember what my point was, but it's hard to be a human living ethically.

[Lola Blanc]

It's really, really capitalism.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And I will take feedback from anyone who wants to talk about this besides rich kids who don't have to work.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, totally. 100%. And often the people that will write to you and sort of point out what ethically horrific thing you're doing, they don't have much of a leg to stand on.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Right. It seems to be the way of the world.

[David Ferrier]

It's the way of the world.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just a little.

[Lola Blanc]

Most of us are doing our best and trying to be ethical.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Most of us, as you said before.

[David Ferrier]

Most of us are like. We are like most humans are trying to do well, it's just the bad actors are the ones that get amplified, and we hear from them way more than we should.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. Well, what are you investigating next?

[David Ferrier]

Oh, my gosh. I'm actually looking for Flightless Bird, my podcast. I'm looking into First Amendment auditors. Have you heard of these people?

[Megan Elizabeth]

No.

[David Ferrier]

They are a certain subset of the American culture. It really only exists in America. And they start filming strangers at their place of work. So they will do this to prove their First Amendment rights. So they will get in people's faces. They'll latch onto a certain person, and they will. Just randomly, they'll just latch on. If you're unfortunate enough to become a target of a First Amendment auditor, you have your details online, your job, your face, your actions, you at your desk. And basically, from what I can tell, I'm learning about this as I'm talking to you. They're just trying to prove the point that it's my First Amendment right to be able to stand in the street and film and do this. You cannot stop me. You can't arrest me. It's my right. And that's their whole mindset. And they'll harass the shit out of people to prove that point.

[Lola Blanc]

This is just like people on Reddit. Like, where is this coming from?

[David Ferrier]

They are out in the world. I'm talking to a woman whose mother is a Liberian, and she is currently being harassed by a First Amendment auditor outside the library every day. So her whole life is being followed and uploaded onto YouTube by this person trying to prove a point.

[Lola Blanc]

But trying to prove a point. Like, is there a subculture they're emerging from?

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, it's absolutely online. It's on forums, it's on Reddit, it's in person meetups. There's just, wow. And you'll see them around occasionally. If you're ever walking along, you see them in LA occasionally. They'll usually have a Handycam, sometimes just on a cell phone, but usually, like a dedicated video device. And they'll just be often outside someone's work, just standing there, filming. And often you'll see someone in their face saying, like, please don't film me. And they'll just be standing their ground. You'll see them around.

[Lola Blanc]

Wow.

[Megan Elizabeth]

There is one guy who kind of does that with the Scientology center, but it's more. I mean, I wish they would do it more.

[David Ferrier]

That's the same kind of philosophy they're doing with Scientology, to kind of like out the Scientologists.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I wish they would do it more towards those people Maybe.

[David Ferrier]

I agree.

[Lola Blanc]

Organizations that are secretive, you know, they.

[David Ferrier]

Do it towards individuals that have just been randomly.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, that's.

[Lola Blanc]

What's the point.

[David Ferrier]

Just to prove your First Amendment rights. So that's a subculture that I'm sort of going down that wormhole now.

[Lola Blanc]

Do these First Amendment people care about the deportations of folks for their speech?

[David Ferrier]

Oh, no, no, no, no. Their interests are very specific.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Wow.

[Lola Blanc]

I'm shocked.

[David Ferrier]

Very, very selfish.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Ferrier]

And most of them are white.

[Lola Blanc]

Also shocked otherwise.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah. Got a bad track record of doing loopy things.

[Lola Blanc]

God damn it.

[David Ferrier]

Well, yeah, I know.

[Lola Blanc]

Can't wait to learn more about it.

[David Ferrier]

Thank you.

[Lola Blanc]

And about all the other weird subcultures you're bound to be exploring.

[David Ferrier]

No, thanks for having me on the show. And again, like you, you both do amazing work. I think, like, talking about this stuff as much as possible is, like, all we can do, because I feel like the world is getting weirder, but I think there's also more awareness of some of the weird. And I think that I like to think that is, like, a net good that's happening, that people being more aware.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Of, like, how I'm gonna go with that hopefully. Yeah, I'm gonna join you there. I think you're right.

[David Ferrier]

Yeah, you're good. Okay.

[Lola Blanc]

I'm on the fence, but I appreciate you guys.

[David Ferrier]

I change daily about how cynical I am about the state of the world.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, every minute. Every minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Where can people find you?

[David Ferrier]

Webworm is my main thing. It's www.webworm.co because I couldn't afford the dot com. That's all my investigative journalism. And I have a podcast about weird American things called Flightless Bird, which is on all places that you get your things. And I think Tickled is on Netflix at the moment.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, great.

[David Ferrier]

Dark Tourist is on Netflix. Mr. Organ, I think, is also on Netflix. If you Google any of these things, it'll pop up where it is. If you're listening in Australia, everything I've said will be incorrect because, you know, every country's got a different thing, right?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Well, my ex boyfriend is probably watching Tickled right now.

[David Ferrier]

Every day. He watches. Yep. Turns it on. Gets into the spirit of the day by watching some competitive endurance tickling.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yep. Super normal.

[Lola Blanc]

Thank you for joining us.

[David Ferrier]

Pleasure.

[Lola Blanc]

All right, and that's the end of our interview with David. Thanks to David for coming on. Megan, I wanted to ask you about something we talked about besides Arise Church, which is the Haunted Hell House or whatever it's called. You said the Hell House. You Said that you would not want to go. Please tell me more.

[Megan Elizabeth]

There's no way I'm going to any haunted house, whether it be the Universal Studio Haunted House.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, really?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Never. There's no way, much less one involving my greatest fear, which is hell. You couldn't pay me to go to a hell house. I know hell isn't real, and I know that the actors at Universal Studios also aren't real, but there's a little part, you know, they're not real.

[Lola Blanc]

The characters are not real.

[Megan Elizabeth]

They're real actors. Um, but I. There's a little part of my brain that doesn't understand what's real and what's not, because it's called trauma, and I just would not enjoy that one single bit. It sounds horrible.

[Lola Blanc]

I mean, it does sound disturbing intentionally. So I get that's. That's the by design.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yes. I mean, it's a haunted house, so they're supposed to be disturbed, but it.

[Lola Blanc]

Was one that's supposed to scare you into joining their church. So, like, that's different.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, it's weird because I love scary movies, so you would think I would like haunted houses, but I don't.

[Lola Blanc]

I'm actually. I. I didn't know that. I'm surprised to learn this. I love haunted houses.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I don't like it. I do not like it at all. You know what? I'm gonna tell you something really quickly. I went to a haunted house when I was little, and they did something too scary, in my opinion. And you tell me if this is too scary. You walk through a tunnel to get to another part of the haunted house. Right. And as you're in the tunnel, where I grew up, there was a ton of train tracks. Everywhere is. You're in the tunnel. A bright light suddenly appeared, and the sound of a train came on. So it looked like you were about to get hit by a train.

[Lola Blanc]

That sounds cool to me. But I. I mean, it just depends on, like, is the child old enough to be going to haunted houses in general? Because there's a lot of scary stuff.

[Megan Elizabeth]

To do with, like, Halloween. That's just like, you're actually getting hit by a train.

[Lola Blanc]

It's definitely very specific.

[Megan Elizabeth]

That's, like, not haunted. That's not ghost. Like, it's not anything except just like, hey, let's make a fifth grader think she's gonna die for real. So that was my last hurrah. Okay, okay. I'm over it. I don't want to go to a hell house. I'll go to a heaven house with Whoever wants to go with me.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh, that sounds nice.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

I wonder if that exists.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Probably not like a spa or something.

[Lola Blanc]

I'm sure, sure I. I will go to any haunted house anytime. Except for the ones that are like the extreme ones, which maybe we should do an episode on those at one point.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Absolutely. Also, one of my best friends worked at the Universal Haunted House last year, the year before last and she was wearing like a mask and her crush came in with another girl and she was bawling underneath her mask and it was like a haunted house inside a.

[Lola Blanc]

Haunted house and is so sad but like such a good movie scene. I'm so sorry that happened to her.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I know. I love her so much. Well, thanks again for listening to us, y'.

[Lola Blanc]

All.

[Megan Elizabeth]

We can't wait to see you again next week. Leave us five stars if you're so inclined. And as always, remember to follow your gut. Watch out for red flags and never ever trust me.

[Lola Blanc]

Bye. This has been an exactly right production.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Hosted by me, Lola Blanc and me, Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Ji Ha Lee.

[Lola Blanc]

This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain and our guest booker is Patrick Cotner.

[Lola Blanc]

Our theme song was composed by Holly Amber Church.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Trust Me is executive produced by Karen Kilgareth, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.

[Lola Blanc]

You can find us on Instagram usmepodcast or on on TikTok at Trust Me.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Cult Podcast Got your own story about cults, extreme belief or manipulation? Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail com.

[Lola Blanc]

Listen to Trust me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.