47: The Soft War

Family Ghosts

Sam Dingman

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thi Bui tells producer Jennifer Lai about the delicate process of asking her parents about their worst experiences - and the even more delicate process of turning those conversations into works of art. Listen to Jennifer’s current project, The Slowdown, here. And find Thi’s memoir, “The Best We Could Do,” here.

Family Ghosts is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Kindred Spirits, our community of supporters on Patreon. For just $5 per month, Patreon supporters get access to all of our episodes ad-free, as well as exclusive bonus content not available anywhere else. If you have the means, please consider joining the Kindred Spirits at http://patreon.com/familyghosts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to WALT.
0:02.4	Home made radio.
0:09.3	Hello, Ghost Family.
0:11.1	Welcome to Family Ghosts.
0:13.5	There's something that's always bothered me about cult stories.
0:27.4	Whenever you hear one of these stories, there's always
0:29.8	this beat where they try to explain why people joined the cult.
0:35.3	And very often, that explanation gets oversimplified.
0:39.6	It's usually something like, the members of this group
0:42.7	were disenchanted spiritual seekers.
0:46.6	And that explanation bothers me because there's rarely any attempt to explain what the people
0:52.4	who join these groups are seeking.
0:54.9	That word, seekers, it gets used as a catch-all for a wide range of emotional states that
1:01.3	might lead someone to join a group like, oh, I don't know, the love family just to pick
1:06.9	one out of the blue.
1:11.4	Now obviously I am particularly familiar with the love family because of the miniseries
1:15.3	that we did about that group back in season 2 here on Family Ghosts.
1:20.6	And I will be the first to admit, working on that miniseries helped me understand why
1:26.6	it's so hard to navigate this inevitable beat in a cult story.
1:32.0	It's because everyone who joins a group like the love family does it for their very own
1:37.7	very specific reason.
1:40.1	For that story alone, we talk to folks whose reasons ranged from personal curiosity about
	...

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